Lawrence Jones and his co-hosts at “Fox & Friends” recently suggested that police should “go after” journalists, managing to be both completely wrong on the law and incredibly shortsighted.
On Monday, Jones and co-hosts Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt, and Brian Kilmeade argued that police should target Pablo Manríquez, whose Washington, D.C.-based newsletter, Migrant Insider, covers migrant policy and politics.
Manríquez’s alleged crime? Receiving a tip from a source and breaking the news about planned raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in northern Virginia.
“Are there consequences for this guy?” asked Earhardt, referring to Manríquez. “I mean, do the police go after him now?”
“They need to,” Jones replied. He also blasted Manríquez, claiming he’s not a journalist and arguing that reporting on ICE’s plans was unjustified because arrests of certain migrants had been signed off on by a judge.
Maybe it’s been so long since “Fox & Friends” have practiced journalism that they’ve forgotten what it looks like. Just to clear things up: Finding out information about official activity and publishing it is textbook journalism. And it’s protected by the First Amendment.
One of the entire reasons we have a First Amendment is to protect the publication of truthful information of public concern. Journalists can’t be held liable for lawfully obtaining information on a matter of public concern from a source and publishing it, even if the source acted illegally.
This protection applies whether a journalist is reporting on ICE raids or revealing the secrets of the “deep state.” You’d think the hosts of “Fox & Friends,” with their skepticism of the government (at least when Democrats are in charge) would appreciate why we need the First Amendment to prevent the police from “going after” journalists who report information that the government dislikes.
Jones and his co-hosts, for instance, presumably would want the First Amendment to protect them if they reported on a tip that the FBI was spying on a former adviser to the president, even if it had been approved by a court. (Turns out courts can be misled or mistaken on this kind of thing.)
And everyone should want the First Amendment to protect journalism about the police. Officers sometimes abuse their power or simply make mistakes. Journalism about police is sometimes the only reason bad officers or rotten systems are held to account and reformed. The ability to report on, scrutinize, and criticize police activity is part of what distinguishes American democracy from a police state.
When it comes to ICE, the public has a legitimate interest in understanding how the government is enforcing immigration laws. Legal immigrants and American citizens may need to take steps to protect themselves from being swept up in raids. Even migrants in the United States illegally have legal rights they can exercise during ICE operations.
Manríquez isn’t the only journalist who’s been unfairly attacked for reporting on ICE. White House border czar Tom Homan has also condemned reporting about Denver, Colorado-area ICE raids, and FCC Chair Brendan Carr announced he would investigate a California radio station that reported on an ongoing ICE raid in San Jose.
The core objection in each of these cases is that this journalism allegedly helps illegal immigrants evade ICE or endangers ICE officers. That’s exactly what “Fox & Friends” argued about Manríquez. Similarly, Homan blamed “the limited number of arrests” in the Denver area “on the fact that news of the raids had publicly leaked.”
But the Constitution protects reporting about police activity in public, even if public scrutiny makes it harder for law enforcement to arrest someone. Everyone has a First Amendment right to observe and even record and publish evidence of police activity in public. Some courts have even held that the First Amendment protects warning others about police operations, like holding a “Cops Ahead” sign to alert motorists to a distracted-driving law enforcement operation.
There’s also no evidence that any of this reporting has endangered ICE officers. It’s common for government officials and pro-police groups to claim that journalism about police could lead to officers being harmed, but when you take a closer look at these claims, they often fall apart.
Perhaps the real reason the government and its supporters don’t want independent journalists reporting on ICE raids is because they want just one official narrative, fed by stunt ride-alongs, fake press releases, and officials’ X posts.
But the public deserves — and the First Amendment protects — more when it comes to information about what the government is up to. Anyone calling for official reprisals against journalists for reporting the news is no friend to Americans, or to the free press.
