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.”
Similarly, this week, New York Times publisher A. G. Sulzberger warned political and business leaders to launch urgent defenses of independent journalism.
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.
