Benjamin Franklin said in his first newspaper in 1722, “without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom, and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech.”
On this 250th anniversary of America’s founding, there is no right more deeply cherished and foundational than the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which is unambiguous: “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” As we see massive assaults on the media play out every day, we should be proud of our media leaders for standing up for the First Amendment — and increasingly having each other’s backs.
Over the last week alone, secret DOJ subpoenas have surfaced targeting reporters at The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal while simultaneously, Trump himself has threatened fresh lawsuits against ABC for its coverage of the Reflecting Pool fiasco, including new revelations suggesting the inadvertent poisoning of baby ducks, while ludicrously accusing ABC’s Jonathan Karl of “trying to rip rubber off surface” of the Reflecting Pool.
This adds to a rapidly growing list of unprecedented attacks, including Trump slapping a $15 billion defamation lawsuit on The New York Times, signaling out renowned New York Times correspondents as treasonous for asking questions, weaponizing the FCC to threaten broadcast licenses at networks over “unpatriotic” coverage, and the FBI physically raiding a Post reporter’s home, handing the DOJ Wall Street Journal articles flagged with “Treason” sticky notes to spark leak hunts, and threatening major book publishers with crippling pre-publication injunctions to bury critical releases.
