Daily Herald opinion: World Press Freedom Day: A threat to press freedom is a threat to democracy
President Donald Trump started his first term by labeling the press an “enemy” of the people. He kicked off his second with a series of actions designed to undermine First Amendment press protections and punish journalists whose policies — or pronouns — somehow offended him.
This is the climate in which we mark Saturday’s World Press Freedom Day, a time to celebrate and to call attention to abuses across the globe.
This year, however, concerns about media suppression are hitting closer to home.
“In my 20 years as a media lawyer,” attorney Kai Falkenberg writes in an opinion piece for The Guardian, “I’ve always seen the United States as the gold standard for press freedom — a model admired by journalists around the world. But in just a few short months, the Trump administration has severely undermined those protections, creating a chilling effect on independent reporting and public dissent.”
Need proof? Consider the following:
• Trump cut The Associated Press’ access to White House events because the news service refused to drop references to the Gulf of Mexico, while acknowledging the president has renamed it Gulf of America. Writers and editors do so, in part, because AP supplies copy to news outlets all over the world where the gulf retains the name it has had for centuries.
• Trump sued CBS News for $20 billion, accusing “60 Minutes” of “voter interference” over its editing of a Kamala Harris interview. The lawsuit was filed in Amarillo, Texas — where it will be heard by a Trump appointee.
• The Federal Communications Commission is investigating CBS and a number of other networks. Recently added to the list was The Walt Disney Co., where the investigation will delve into DEI practices of the past.
• Trump’s press aides said they won’t answer questions from reporters who include their pronouns on email signatures — a practice not limited to the transgender community repeatedly targeted by the administration.
• Access to public information is under attack. Data has been removed from federal websites, Elon Musk has argued that the Department of Government Efficiency is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act and officials at the Department of Health and Human Services got rid of several offices that handled FOIA requests.
Anyone who sees these attacks as solely a press issue is missing the point.
When an Associated Press reporter is kept from the Oval Office, millions of readers in the U.S. and across the globe are essentially denied access as well.
When a reporter is punished for sharing preferred pronouns, journalists can be sidelined based on any number of arbitrary guidelines.
And when news stations and newspapers are sued by the president and targeted by the FCC, they are forced to operate under threat of retaliation for coverage deemed “unfavorable” — no matter how important the story may be.
A special report by the Committee to Protect Journalists, released Wednesday, sums it up well: “This pressure from the regulator on news outlets seems intended to send a strong, and concerning, message to newsrooms: Fall in line or face the possibility of myriad legal and regulatory challenges.”
What’s at stake, the report continues, is “the availability of independent, fact-based news for vast swaths of America’s population.”
That should worry all Americans, regardless of how they voted in the November election.
Our founding fathers made press freedom a bedrock of our democracy. As Americans, we must protect both.