What First Amendment?

What First Amendment?
Eliza Newlin Carney
January 25, 2018

Republicans cast themselves as champions of the First Amendment, but they’ve done nothing to stop Donald Trump’s war on free speech.


Conservatives who should be appalled by President Donald Trump’s anti-media attacks have responded instead with a collective shrug.

Never mind that Trump has taken steps to block publication of a critical book, assures a typical Wall Street Journal editorial—he would never follow through, and the courts would never go along. The Journal likewise brushes off Trump’s threat to “open up” the libel laws as “familiar and feckless bluster.” Trump may brand journalists “the enemy” of the American people and hand out “fake news” awards, goes the argument from the right, but his actions matter more than his words.

This sanguine take on Trump’s campaign to demonize the news media overlooks the real-world damage it inflicts on journalists, both at home and abroad. Trump’s words and actions have materially chilled speech—in the U.S., where 78 journalists were attacked or arrested last year, and around the world, 262 journalists are in prison, 21 of them for publishing “fake news.” The toxic fallout includes death threats, anti-Semitic media harassment, physical attacks, and GOP governors who deny interviews. (One politician paid more than $5,000 in fines and restitution after body-slamming a reporter.)

American journalists on a recent panel co-hosted by the Newseum and the Committee to Protect Journalists described struggling to do their work in an unprecedented atmosphere of hostility, suspicion, stonewalling, and even fear. Death threats are routine. “The FBI is on speed dial. So is the Secret Service, and the local police department,” said panelist April Ryan, White House correspondent for American Urban Radio Networks, who has publicly tangled with Trump.

Foreign journalists are paying an even bigger price, prompting some conservatives to finally speak up. Trump’s “unrelenting attacks on the integrity of American journalists and news outlets” have “provided cover for repressive regimes to follow suit,” wrote GOP Senator John McCain, of Arizona, in a recent Washington Post op-ed. McCain cited journalists arrested and systematically discredited in China, Egypt, Russia, Turkey, Venezuela, and elsewhere.

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http://prospect.org/article/what-first-amendment