The way it was kind of described to me was like if Fox News was basically every TV channel.

And The New York Post was like every newspaper.

From WNYC in New York, this is on the media.

I'm Michael Loanger.

On this week's show, we're trying to answer the question,

where is the U.S. right now on the backsliding democracy scale?

We were wondering, like, is it fair to call U.S. like an illiberal regime?

But then we were talking and we were thinking like, oh, but they are like deporting people

for no reason.

Meanwhile, an old academic study about what works to push back on autocratic regimes is a hot new meme on the resistance internet.

If one percent of the population participates at the peak of the movement, then the regime has a 50% chance of giving way,

and it gets better from there, up to 3.5%. No regime has survived a 3.5% population resistance.

It's all coming up after this.

From WNYC in New York, this is on the media. I'm Michael Lohinger.

A few months ago, I received an email with an interview request that stopped me in my tracks.

What did it feel like for you to see your country turn into an illiberal regime?

And how do you manage to continue doing your job with integrity and courage?

This is Juana Philip.

I am a Romanian journalist.

What was so weird about this is that we were in the middle of putting together an episode

about the erosion of democracy in other countries around the world.

And I had just interviewed a Hungarian journalist to ask him for advice on how to approach our

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