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The [Freedom of the Press] Will Not Be Abridged
So It Goes
We keep moving...Registered User regular
We keep moving...Registered User regular
First Amendment to the United States ConstitutionCongress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The freedom of the press in America is under attack from the current Presidential administration. Observe:
Trump Strategist Stephen Bannon Says Media Should ‘Keep Its Mouth Shut’ - NYT
WASHINGTON — Just days after President Trump spoke of a “running war’’ with the media, his chief White House strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, ratcheted up the attacks, arguing that news organizations had been “humiliated” by the election outcome and repeatedly describing the media as “the opposition party” of the current administration.
“The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while,” Mr. Bannon said in an interview on Wednesday.
“I want you to quote this,” Mr. Bannon added. “The media here is the opposition party. They don’t understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States.”
Today, several news outlets were shut out of a press gaggle with Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary. This was after Trump had given a speech at CPAC in the morning which included continued rhetoric vilifying the press.
Trump slams media at CPAC - Boston Globe
President Donald Trump escalated his criticism of the news media Friday, taking direct aim this time at the use of anonymous sources. Reporters ‘‘shouldn’t be allowed to use sources unless they use somebody’s name,’’ he declared, just hours after members of his own staff held a press briefing and refused to allow their names to be used.
White House blocks CNN, New York Times from press briefing hours after Trump slams media - WaPo
The White House on Friday barred news outlets — including CNN, the New York Times, Politico and the Los Angeles Times — from attending an off-camera press briefing held by spokesman Sean Spicer, igniting another controversy concerning the relationship between the Trump administration and the media.
CNN's Sara Murray went on air to describe what happened:
We lined up. We were told there was a list ahead of time, which is sort of abnormal, but we put our name on a list. And then when we went to enter, I was blocked by a White House staffer, who said we were not on the list for this gaggle today.
Now, normally, if you were going to do something like this — an extended gaggle, off camera — you would have one person from each news outlet. As you know, we have multiple people from CNN here every day. So, if you're going to do something beyond a pool, which is sort of the smallest group of reporters that then disseminates the information, you would have one person from every news outlet.
That is not what the White House was doing today. What the White House was doing was handpicking the outlets they wanted in for this briefing. So Breitbart, the Washington Times, the One America News Network — news outlets that maybe the White House feels are more favorable were all allowed in, whereas I was blocked from entering, Politico was blocked from entering, the New York Times, the L.A. Times. All of these news outlets were blocked from going to a gaggle.
White House Correspondents' Association President Jeff Mason called in to CNN to say the organization is “still getting information about” the decision, adding:
They clearly wanted to have a gaggle that was not on camera and was not the full press corps today. We don't object to there being briefings like that that aren't always on camera, but we have encouraged them when they want to do something like that ... [to] still do it in the press room and do it in a place where all the reporters have a chance to ask questions.
So, we've made that clear, and we're going to continue to have discussions with them about that. And we're not happy about how this happened today.
Members of the press reacted strongly to being shut out of the briefing.
Fox's Shepard Smith: CNN is not fake news - TheHill
Let's discuss the freedom of the press in America. See next post for rules for this thread.
So It Goes on
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This thread will be watched closely and locked if it devolves into general media topics.
The topic of this thread is the freedom of the press in America. This includes attacks on that freedom by Trump or Trump supporters. Historical discussion of the freedom of the press in this country is okay, but try not to get too far into the weeds. Make it relevant to discussion of current day events.
For talk about fascism, we have a History of Fascism thread here: http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/209712/historical-context-of-fascism/p1
Off-topic:
- how the media coverage affected the 2016 election
- something dumb a CNN/ABC/MSNBC/etc anchor or pundit said
- unethical behavior by news outlets, ragging on Fox News, or pointing out that Brietbart is racist
- general talk about appearances by Trump surrogates - comments needs to be focused on surrogates who are directly addressing the topic of freedom of the press or are directly attacking the news station they are appearing on
Please do your absolute best to stay on topic. Also, do us the courtesy of reading to the end of the thread before replying to something that the thread may have moved on from. You may also be replying to something a mod has addressed. So read to the end, then reply.
By what standard have news agencies historically been held with regards to White House access? We know the following things to be true:
- The room is not unlimited in size. Not every news organization can have a physical presence.
- Having a presence in the room represents a significant financial investment from any news agency wishing to participate.
One of my coworkers asked, "Ok, so even if CNN / BBC / Politico are objectively good and should be there, by what reasoning can (or even should) you keep out the objectively bad, like InfoWars, or Hillaryforjail.net, or ObamaIsAnAlienPlant.com."
I truly didn't have an answer for him. Part of me wonders if that is a potential angle - by forcing CNN/BBC/et al to fight for their legitimacy, it implicitly guarantees a seat at the table for Breitbart and InfoWars.
Basically, discourse and knowledge is our last hope. I am not usually a doomsayer but if Trump manages to succeed here, we're worse off than I ever thought we could be even amid all the other garbage Trump is pulling.
Was limited space even cited as an issue? It's not really worth discussing because this is blatant cherry picking. Blatant in the sense that the Trump staff is explicitly admitting to it and pretty much proud of it.
It seems textually ambiguous
Can CNN, the NYTimes, and so on collectively sue on constitutional grounds?
Limited in the sense that, even for a large room, there are more people who want to be in that room than are allowed to be in that room.
Not without moving it off-site, away from the White House.
To rephrase, I and my coworker are trying to divine what standard currently grants access to the White House, since apparently it can be very easily removed (in this case, participation in the Gaggle).
This is horrifying regardless.
The action was symbolic, and the recourse will happen in the court of public opinion. The administration can hold a closed session with select news groups, but such a move with such an obvious reason is going to light a fire under people.
Edit: like, if trump gives an interview to fox but refuses cnn, he's not abridging their first amendment rights. This scenario is more about how an unhinged leader can attempt to block out the press, which is a very serious issue but I don't think it's a first amendment issue.
The room is of course not unlimited in size, but they chose a smaller room (I don't quite recall the gaggle/pool differences or the administration's sad-sack attempts at spinning the size thing, but they chose Spicer's personal office I believe)
As to the second point, I th ink the larger question was framed by your friend as "why not give every possible alleged journalist WH press credentials?" And I think it merits reframing it as "why...?" Press space is limited in any popular event, WH Press Corps being infamously hard to get. To your friend's question, I would respond and ask, why is it suddenly okay to shed decades of WHPC norms and customs and freeze out highly respected organizations (and, uh, BuzzFeed, whose one respected politics person got snapped up by CNN)? What is the rationale for allowing idiots in?
and the gengars who are guiding me" -- W.S. Merwin
If the spirit of the law is to enable prevent the government from preventing the press from disseminating information to the public, I think there are certainly philosophical arguments to be made here that Trump is subverting that. IANAL. Doesn't that have any legal weight? Can't a case be made that closing off press access, selectively or in totality, defies the tenets on which this country was built and has existed upon for centuries with regard to the press.
I guess arguments can be made in either direction and I admit I am no expert on constitutional law (I'm barely knowledgable enough to be a layman) but can't it be argued that selective access in this context abridges the ability and freedom of The Press (in aggregate) to report the news?
Wouldn't it be possible for a lawyer to present a persuasive argument that only press of a certain politically bias or persuasion is being given access to information and that this essentially infringes on the ability of The Press as an institution from collecting and disseminating information (i.e. the entire purpose of The Press)? Is that not abridgment?
I think an interview is different. This is a white house press conference, no?
Incall is a bit different than outcall for lack of a better analogy.
I think it's very hard to make that argument while still allowing for things like government officials giving exclusive interviews or keeping the press out of the Situation Room.
The government is legally free to tell or not tell the press (and any subset of the press) whatever they want, and I think that's a good thing, legally.
Which doesn't mean I think any of this is okay; on the contrary, it is our responsibility as citizens to make our opinion of these actions known precisely because they are legal. The court of public opinion is the only one that has, or should have, jurisdiction on this.
The second legislation or an executive order is passed that limits the press's ability to publish what they want, that's when we have a constitutional issue on our hands.
For now, though, we as a country need to make it clear in no uncertain terms that this is unacceptable behavior from any American government.
Doesn't tradition have some kind of legal weight here?
"After decades of only including the liberal media, President Trump is at last allowing the presence of press that will present the unbiased truth."
I think you'd be hard pressed to make a good argument that Trump broke the law here. He just subverted the most basic spirit of the press.
I don't think it's really that simple to define what is and isn't abridgment in this context.
So much of our government's interaction with the populace is based on custom (or tradition, as you say) not law. Press conferences are voluntary; they're not a legal requirement as far as I know. I mean, arguably this isn't even a press conference, it's an interview with a few news sources done all at once to be convenient. The White House has interviews on the property all the time.
I agree that there is a qualitative difference between press conferences and interviews. I would be surprised if there is a legal difference, because what would it be based on? Number of people? Location? Decision to call it a "press conference"?
But your quoted argument can certainly be deconstructed and argued against. That's not a given baseline truth. And regardless, do we have any history of specific institutions being explicitly disincluded by any administration?
Not only that, it's making the press more adversarial and prone to skip crap like the White House Correspondents Dinner. That ballroom better be empty aside from Fox News and the Breitbart table.
I mean, we're still going to have transcripts, right? We're still going to have conferences with members of the press. Maybe some reporters don't get to derail it to make fun of Spicer and Dippin Dots, but they're still going to go on and questions still will be asked. I don't think this counts as The First Step to Totalitarianism that CNN claims.
No explicit constitutional weight, no.
But the press works the way it works based on how society functions and how the press has shaped itself within it. Meaning "abridgment" of the press in a modern context relates to the current shape of the press. The press provides visibility into what the government is doing and there is evidence that they are being prevented from doing so in a way that The Press (in aggregate) - which is a wide selection of subjectively left, subjectively right, subjectively moderate, and objectively sterile - is being abridged by selective engagement of the press.
The founding fathers were either idiots or geniuses. Maybe this was worded the way it was just so it could be malleable in the face of a changing press.
The bolded is not necessarily true, considering that they are willing to let "journalists" attend via Skype.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
So you don't think that Trump is actively trying to discredit the media that criticize him to create a Putin Esque bubble for his supporters?
You honestly don't see his constant war with the press and calling them fake news and the enemy of the people as insanely dangerous and a step towards hijacking our democracy the way Putin has in Russia?
Really? For all of Trumps dangers his attack on the media has been the scariest since he first black balled folks in his campaign.
Were they?
But was the executive branch especially successful at privatizing information from certain news institutions pre-Nixon?
No, there was a request by major news outlets to have some sort of presser thing with Obama and FOX was the only one who didn't request an invite and when this was discovered the Obama administration reached out to FOX and said "you guys wanted in on this, right?" and FOX was like "yes" but not before blaring on the air about how "we were shut out of an Obama press meeting" even though that's not what happened.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
This was a terrible idea.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Never actually happened: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/president-obamas-feud-with-fox-news/
Also, eagerly awaiting Fox News' response in standing up for CNN, NYT, et al..
The problem is that there won't be any one there to challenge the bullshit from the Administration. The transcripts are going to be filled with stupid crap like "Why do these snowflakes hate freedom?" or "Hillary's the worst, right?"
Nixon was the first clown fiesta of an administration in anything like a modern media environment. The equivalent to press briefings before then was things like FDR's fireside chats.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Does Shep Smith even count as Fox News anymore?
Enlist in Star Citizen! Citizenship must be earned!
I guess one could argue that Trump's actually been one of the most honest and open presidents if you consider his Twitter account. Every single brain fart he's had within the past two years is there for everyone to see.
I mean, let's put this in context: Trump has all but declared all our war on the press. He is trying to convince the public that the press is the enemy of the public. From the POTUS, this can have a chilling effect on how the populace even views the press. How is this not abridgment? This is a bit of a devil's advocate argument because this would be hard to prove or even argue, but if the press's ability and freedom to disseminate information is stymied by a chilling effect propagated by the executive branch, isn't that's abridgment to some degree?
Maybe not, not really, but I don't think this is a simple question.