Allowed rising adversity to crush liberal journalist (7)
I believe the answer is:
enabled
'allowed' is the definition.
(I've seen this in another clue)
'rising adversity to crush liberal journalist' is the wordplay.
'rising' shows that the letters should be reversed in order (going up in a down clue).
'adversity' becomes 'bane' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'to crush' says to put letters next to each other (in a down clue, some letters go on top of others).
'liberal' becomes 'l' (abbreviation).
'journalist' becomes 'ed' (short for editor).
'bane' back-to-front is 'enab'.
'enab'+'l'+'ed'='ENABLED'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for enabled that I've seen before include "Permitted" , "Made something possible" , "Be laden (anag.)" , "Qualified" , "Facilitated or empowered" .)