Press Freedom in Crisis

Hundreds of reporters have been attacked or arrested while covering protests against police brutality. For data, see the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a partnership between CPJ and Freedom of the Press Foundation.  

Trump, U.S. governors must stand up for press freedom, CPJ and other groups say

June 11, 2020

The media is entitled to cover protests without obstruction or fear

New York, June 11, 2020– The Committee to Protect Journalists today joined dozens of groups from throughout the United States and around the world in calling on U.S. officials in every level of government to speak out forcefully in defense of press freedom, after law enforcement in dozens of cities attacked journalists covering protests that have swept the country over the past two weeks.

The United States must ensure media can work unobstructed and without fear of injury or reprisal, the media and press freedom organizations urged in a series of letters sent to President Trump and governors of each state.

Since protests demanding an end to police brutality and calling for social justice broke out on May 26, the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker  has received reports of at least 400 incidents across the country, including assaults and arrests of journalists. CPJ swiftly condemned the attacks and has called for accountability and justice at all levels. (The paper continues here) 

The Trump Administration and the Media

Committee to Protect Journalists

April 16, 2020

Attacks on press credibility endanger US democracy and global press freedom

The Trump administration has stepped up prosecutions of news sources, interfered in the business of media owners, harassed journalists crossing U.S. borders, and empowered foreign leaders to restrict their own media. But Trump’s most effective ploy has been to destroy the credibility of the press, dangerously undermining truth and consensus even as the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to kill tens of thousands of Americans. A special report of the Committee to Protect Journalists.

WASHINGTON, D.C. When President Donald J. Trump initially minimized the danger of the COVID-19 virus in the first two months of 2020, he attacked news media reporting about the growing threat and his administration’s slow response. “Low Ratings Fake News MSDNC (Comcast) & @CNN are doing everything possible to make the Caronavirus look as bad as possible, including panicking markets, if possible,” the president tweetedExternal link on February 26, implying that MSNBC is allied with the Democratic Party.

On March 8, after more press reports about shortcomings in the administration’s response, Trump tweeted, “The Fake News Media is doing everything possible to make us look bad. Sad!” The next day, after the Dow Jones Index lost 2,014 points, or 7.79 percent, of its value, the president also blamed it on “fake news.” In a March 18 tweet, Trump insisted, “I always treated the Chinese Virus very seriously” and “the Fake News new narrative is disgraceful & false.” At contentious White House COVID-19 press briefings on March 19  and 20 , he again angrily attacked the news media, saying that “the press is very dishonest” in its reporting on his handling of the crisis and that journalists “truly do hurt our country.”

It was all typical of the Trump presidency’s unprecedented hostility toward the press. Trump has habitually attacked the news media in rallies, responses to reporters’ questions, and many hundreds of tweets. He has repeatedly called the press “fake news,” “the enemy of the people,” “dishonest,” “corrupt,” “low life reporters,” “bad people,” “human scum” and “some of the worst human beings you’ll ever meet.” As Trump told Leslie Stahl of CBS News shortly after he was elected president in 2016, he has been trying to destroy the credibility of the news media’s reporting about him.

“I believe that President Trump is engaged in the most direct sustained assault on freedom of the press in our history,” Fox News anchor Chris Wallace said  at a Society of Professional Journalists press freedom event in Washington on December 11, 2019. “He has done everything he can to undercut the media, to try and delegitimize us, and I think his purpose is clear: to raise doubts, when we report critically about him and his administration, that we can be trusted.”

In response to Trump’s steady stream of verbal attacks, members of the press were regularly booed at Trump rallies, and reporters named in his tweets have been repeatedly harassed online. There also have been credible threats to news organizations, with CNN frequently targeted.

The president’s press secretaries, other White House aides and administration officials, along with Trump’s allies in Congress also repeatedly attacked the press, often parroting the president’s language. Along with Trump’s thousands of documented false statements and his promotion of discredited conspiracy theories, the administration’s attacks on the credibility of the news media have dangerously undermined truth and consensus in a deeply divided country.

“We now have some of the best news organizations that the world has known,” said Paul Steiger, former editor of The Wall Street Journal, founder of the ProPublica nonprofit news organization, and former chair of Committee to Protect Journalists’ board of directors. “But Trump has created a climate in which the best news, most fact-checked news is not being believed by many people.”

The Trump administration has threatened the work of the American press in other ways. The Justice Department has stepped up investigations and prosecutions of journalists’ sources of classified government information, while Trump and his attorneys general have refused to rule out  prosecuting reporters themselves.

The Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency has questioned journalists at border posts, searched their electronic devices, and monitored their movements in a secret database.

Trump himself has called for boycotts of news organizations and changes in libel law to punish the press. His re-election campaign sued The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN for libel for opinions expressed by their columnists and contributors. He tried unsuccessfully to take away White House press credentials from journalists and news organizations whose questions and stories he did not like. He encouraged federal government interference in the businesses of the owners of CNN, the traditional broadcast networks, and The Washington Post.

As threatening as all of that has been for the news media, Trump’s attacks have had the most success in eroding the credibility of the American press among his many millions of supporters. A major Pew Research Center study in late 2019 showed that a plurality of Republicans consistently distrusted most of the news media (except for Trump-supporting media like Fox News), while pluralities of Democrats tended to trust them. In a Pew survey conducted in mid-March , 62% of respondents said the news media had exaggerated the risks from the COVID-19 virus. 

Some expert observers fear an existential threat to American freedom of the press. “Trump disrespects the press as a core democratic institution,” University of Utah media law professor RonNell Anderson Jones told me. She said that American news media are dependent on citizens’ acceptance of its First Amendment role. If that erodes, she warned, “freedom of the press is in peril.”

“President Trump’s attacks on the press are an assault on the validity of the enterprise itself,” Frank Sesno, a former CNN cable news anchor who directs George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs, said in an interview for this report. “It is an Orwellian barrage of dehumanizing language about the purpose of the job, people who do the job and the organizations that employ them. It is a continuing assault on a free press – and on the public’s right to know and the public’s understanding of the role of the press in a democracy.”

Trump’s attacks also appear to have empowered autocratic foreign leaders to discredit and restrict the press in their own countries. “When the president calls the press the enemy of the people, he encourages every autocrat, every dictator who wants to shut down freedom of the press. They’re validated,” said Sesno, who works with news media in Eastern European countries. “It reverberates around the world.”

The president has personally orchestrated and dominated media information about his administration through tens of thousands of tweets and dozens of encounters with the press in which he chooses the reporters and the questions to which he will respond. By the count of The Washington Post’s Fact Checker team, Trump had made 16,241 false or misleading claims in all those communications in his first three years in office. 

At the same time, until the COVID-19 crisis, the Trump administration restricted most on-the-record access to White House and administration officials other than the president. Traditional daily briefings for the press disappeared for many months at a time at the White House and the State and Defense departments, and officials often refused to speak on the record in interviews. Only during the COVID-19 pandemic were daily on the record briefings held for the news media, led by Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.

In response, reporters developed confidential sources of information inside the White House and government departments for revelatory stories. Trump then called those stories “fake news” and claimed that their “anonymous sources” did not exist. When Trump attacked those stories and the reporters who wrote them, his supporters often targeted the journalists with online insults and vitriol.

“There are less people on the record now in the Trump administration,” said Anita Kumar, Politico’s White House correspondent. “We’re not making things up, but people don’t believe us.”

In this report, I will examine the impact of Trump’s attacks on the credibility of the American press; his administration’s restrictions on access to government information; the president’s veracity; his legal challenges to the work of the news media; the president’s attempted interference in the financial independence of some media owners; and the impact on the press in other countries. I also will explore what journalists and media law experts say about how the press should respond.

I interviewed for this report nearly 40 journalists, press freedom advocates, journalism school deans, media lawyers and professors, and administration officials. I relied on extensive research by Stephanie Sugars of the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a project of CPJ and the Freedom of the Press Foundation. I talked to Michael Dubke, Trump’s former White House director of communications. However, repeated requests for a response to Stephanie Grisham, the White House press secretary whose departure was announced April 7, and her deputy, Hogan Gidley, went unanswered. (The report continues here)

Recommendations

The Committee to Protect Journalists makes the following recommendations to the Trump administration:

Publicly recognize and affirm the role of a free press in a democracy and refrain from delegitimizing or discrediting the media or journalists performing their vital function -- not least during a public health crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic. Refrain from vilifying individual journalists and media outlets, including on Twitter.

Resume daily press briefings and ensure that reporters independently credentialed by the White House Correspondents Association are granted access. Ensure journalists and their associations have equal and fair access to the White House and State Department and are not punished for unfavorable coverage.

Speak to reporters on the record and avoid over-reliance on confidential briefings. Avoid the perception of political favoritism by granting presidential interviews to a range of news outlets, not just those that produce favorable coverage.

Do not retaliate against media outlets by interfering or threatening to interfere in the financial independence of their owners. Refrain from threats to rescind the broadcasting licenses of television and radio stations regarded as critical of the administration or its supporters.

Instruct all government departments to ensure timely compliance with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests without regard to the media organizations or reporters filing those requests.

Implement, at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the recommendations laid out in CPJ’s 2018 report “Nothing to Declare,” including requiring a warrant for device searches and releasing transparency reports about such searches.

Prohibit DHS and CBP agents from asking journalists about their beats, opinions, contacts, or coverage. Provide the information related to CBP as requested in the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by CPJ and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP) without further delay.

End the practice of bringing espionage charges against news sources who leak classified information to journalists, as it creates a chilling effect and restricts the free flow of information on matters of public interest. Drop the espionage charges against Julian Assange and cease efforts to extradite him to the U.S. 

Order the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to comply with the requirement, under the National Defense Authorization Act, to provide an unclassified report to Congress listing individuals determined to be involved in any way in the 2018 murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Impose sanctions on those deemed to be responsible, including Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman.