The ‘national security’ panic button

Dear Friend of Press Freedom:

Trump’s Department of Justice is invoking national security in new, dangerous ways to go after the press. Plus, an Alabama university cracks down on free speech on the radio, while conservatives, along with everyone else, continue to tire of Brendan Carr’s censorship schemes.

Government raises alarming legal argument to prop up media ban

To defend the Trump administration banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House, DOJ lawyers are arguing in court that the outlets were barred not because Trump didn’t like what they reported, but because they had published “sensitive or classified information.”

That’s an obvious pretext — Trump himself repeatedly admitted he was singling out the outlets for coverage he disliked — but it’s still significant. As Caitlin Vogus, senior adviser for Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), explains in MS NOW, the government is now claiming journalists and news outlets can be punished for publishing government leaks. Throughout the Julian Assange prosecution, the government claimed the case against the WikiLeaks publisher for obtaining and publishing government secrets was a one-off, and that “conventional” journalists need not be concerned. Who could’ve guessed that was nonsense, other than us and pretty much every other press freedom and civil liberties organization?

Alabama university censors NPR affiliate

The Alabama legislature passed a bill earlier this year requiring all state and local entities to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America,” slavishly following Trump’s executive order demanding the same. Now, the University of Alabama at Birmingham is forcing local public radio station WBHM to comply in its on-air reporting, even though the school could have easily ignored the toothless law or claimed journalism was exempt.

For The Intercept, FPF Chief of Advocacy Seth Stern and Reporters Without Borders Executive Director Clayton Weimers wrote about why the university should have chosen to stand up for journalists and the First Amendment, rather than embarrass itself.

DOJ: Truth Social profiteering is Trump’s version of fireside chats

Lawyers for FPF and The Intercept argued this week for an injunction to stop Trump’s unconstitutional scheme to charge $1.2 million per year for early access to news he breaks exclusively on his social media platform, Truth Social.

Attorneys for the government argued that Trump communicates through Truth Social just like Franklin D. Roosevelt communicated through fireside chats. “Well, President Roosevelt didn’t charge money for his fireside chats, did he?” U.S. District Judge Paul Oetken responded.

Why ‘independent’ editorial boards can’t protect journalism

The settlement between state attorneys general and Paramount, clearing the way for its merger with Warner Bros., mandates that Paramount create an editorial independence board to oversee CNN and CBS. We said from the start that the board was a joke, but just in case we were missing something, we assembled an all-star panel of journalists and newsroom leaders who have seen how somewhat similar efforts played out in the past.

Conservatives have had enough of the FCC

ABC fought the Federal Communications Commission’s harassment campaign in court this week, but they’re not the only ones tired of FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s censorship. Voices all over the political spectrum have spoken out about how Carr’s ill-advised and unconstitutional threats and coercion will come back to bite everyone who values free speech. We put together a video montage of conservative voices calling out Carr’s overreach.