An assault on the freedom of the press

FIRST & FOREMOST

Has it really come to this?

The United Nations high commissioner for human rights recently railed against President Donald Trump for his attack on freedom of the press, which the commissioner says could provoke violence against journalists. Speaking at a news conference in Geneva on Aug. 30, High Commissioner Zeid Ra `ad al-Hussein, in reference to the Washington Post, New York Times and CNN, said, “to call these news organizations ‘fake’ does tremendous damage and to refer to individual journalists in this way, I have to ask the question is this not an incitement for others to attack journalists.” He added, “it’s really quite amazing when you think that freedom of the press, not only a cornerstone of the U.S. Constitution but very much something that the United States defended over the years is now itself under attack from the president. It’s sort of a stunning turnaround. And ultimately the sequence is a dangerous one — incitement, fear, self-censorship, banning and then violence.”

The dangers to press freedom referenced by al-Hussein are real enough that they have prompted three press freedom organizations (the Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders and the Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press) to begin doing in the United States what it has long done in countries with repressive regimes — document restrictions on the media, including violence and threats of violence against journalists.

The project, announced in July, came after Trump tweeted out a fake-wrestling video showing him pummeling a person whose face was covered by the CNN logo. In a statement issued by the Reporter’s Committee, executive director Bruce Brown condemned the president’s threat of physical violence against journalists: “No one should be threatened with physical harm for doing their jobs. Journalists are your neighbors, they’re your friends. Journalists perform a critical function in our society, one the Founding Fathers felt was so necessary that they enshrined it first in the Bill of Rights.” He added, “Freedom of the press is a cornerstone of our democracy. The press are the people’s window into the halls of power, and most importantly, they are the people’s check on that power. When the president attacks the press, he attacks the people.”

While early in his term Trump famously declared that ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and the New York Times “were the enemy of the American people,” his assault on the press has continued. Just last month in Phoenix, stinging from the media’s criticism of his response to Charlottesville, Trump took the occasion to assail the media, calling them “truly dishonest people” and saying “the media and fake media, they make up stories, they have no sources in many cases, they say a ‘source says,’ there is no such thing, but they don’t report the facts.”

Speaking to a crowd of journalists at an awards ceremony in November 2016, and lamenting over Trump’s first tweet post-election, which by claiming “professional protesters” were “incited by the media” appeared to be a continuation of his campaign anti-media rhetoric, veteran CNN news correspondent Christiane Amanpour shared a cautionary tale: “Though we are not there yet,” she said at the time, “here’s a postcard from the world: This is how it goes with authoritarians like Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Turkey’s Recep Erdogan, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, the Ayatollahs, the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte, et al. International journalists know only too well: First the media is accused of inciting, sympathizing and associating, then suddenly they find themselves accused of being full-fledged subversives and even terrorists. They end up in handcuffs, in cages in kangaroo courts, in prison — and then, who knows?”

Whether emboldened by Trump’s anti-media rhetoric or not, recent incidents of violence against journalists are cause for alarm. In May, then-congressional candidate Greg Gianforte grabbed Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs by the neck, shoved him to the ground and punched him after Jacobs persisted in questioning him about his position on the American Health Care Act. Gianforte’s campaign initially said Jacobs was the aggressor and characterized him as part of the “liberal media.” Gianforte, who went on to win Montana’s special election, later apologized, making a $50,000 donation to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Also in May, according to a Huffington Post report, an Alaska Dispatch News reporter told police that Republican state Sen. David Wilson slapped him during an encounter over a recent story; a reporter from West Virginia was arrested while trying to ask a question of Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price; and a CQ Roll Call reporter said he was pinned against a wall by security guards after trying to ask a Federal Communications Commission member a question in Washington.

Closer to home, journalists have become targets of violence while covering protest and counter-protest activities following events in Charlottesville. A local CBS reporter was attacked by protesters while covering events in Richmond, and a KTVU reporter had her phone violently knocked from her hand by a counter-protester last week in Berkeley.

This nation’s press freedoms were a source of national pride and the envy of the entire world. Now the international community is sounding the alarm on their downward trajectory. Violence against journalists and degradation of the institutional press hurts us all. Journalists deserve our respect and protection, laws should ensure their safety and deter targeted violence and the inflammatory rhetoric espoused by the president must be rebuked in the strongest of terms.