To the Editor:
Over our nearly 250-year history the American people have witnessed efforts multiple times by elected leaders – through presidential executive orders, or sometimes from congressional actions – to threaten our nation’s free press freedoms.
These interfering measures have been intended to impede the availability of independent, fact-based news that aims to inform America’s population even if viewed as adversarial by national leaders.
Of current noteworthiness, there’s been a significant increase of journalists, in newsrooms across the nation, seeking safety advice. In the changing political climate, these journalists sense threats to their ability to report the news without fear of retribution from those in power.
It’s nowadays become clear that the fate of our democracy and the ability of journalists to work without fear are mutually interactive and supportive. We are seeing policies of the Donald J. Trump administration that directly impact and thereby hinder press freedom. It requires no imagination to find that such actions have also inspired hostilities by harm to America’s journalists in print, on the air, everywhere in America.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) was founded in 1981 by Walter Cronkite and fellow U.S. journalists in response to the needs of a Paraguayan journalist. Annually since, the Committee has held International Press Freedom Awards dinners where recognition is given to journalists and press freedom advocates who have been subject to beatings, threats, intimidation and prison for reporting the news.
The way things are developing in the U.S. now, by this time next year, we could be seeing American recipients for such an award.
The Committee is reaching out to the U.S. public and all branches and levels of government – from cities and states to the U.S. Supreme Court – to safeguard and defend press freedom in order to safeguard the future of American democracy.
Meanwhile we see threats to freedom of press in limiting makeup of press pools and restricting access to the president, who aims harsh rhetoric and insults at journalists he doesn’t like. Further, the Federal Communications Commission and other agencies are being politicalized, and we are seeing the end to government funding of National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System. The Trump administration has ordered investigations into news networks that have written or aired critical and/or unsupportive material about administration policies and actions.
Though protesting and criticizing our government has historically aroused tempers, we as a nation have managed to work through such difficulties without dismantling our Constitution and Bill of Rights or harming information-sharing.
Yet we now have a president who disregards the law and our history of sharing vital information. It seems now that all must abide by his dictates, or face serious retribution for offending him. There may be those who like or accept this – until it becomes personal to them, their friends or family members. As we’ve seen in dictatorships in other parts of the world, journalists attacked for reporting the news may have no recourse after being found wanting by authorities. The consequences in autocratic regimes too often are severe: loss of employment, financial ruin, prison time, and even clandestine capital punishment.
–Gene H. McIntyre, Keizer
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