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The criminalisation of journalism is part of a wide-ranging assault on freedom of expression moving ahead with frightening speed in the US and rest of the world. Dictators, in place or aspiring, from Ankara to Washington and Moscow to Delhi, offer the same mendacious reasons for targeting news gatherers by accusing them of posing a threat to national security.
Securing a monopoly of important and unimportant information is a fundamental weapon of state control, which 250 years ago the founding fathers of the United States renounced in keeping with the core principles of the age of enlightenment. Taking only developments in the last week, these principles are being subverted by the relentless suppression of criticism of the autocratic state being constructed by President Donald Trump.
The US War Secretary, Pete Hegseth, says that the Pentagon and the Department of Justice are establishing “a joint taskforce to identify and prosecute… unauthorised disclosures of sensitive” information to the press. In words that could have come from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, Hegseth said “the security of our nation cannot be a bargaining chip for those who seek momentary headlines, [because] access to confidential and secret information is a sacred trust, and those who betray that trust will be met with the full force of the law”.
