Among his many memorable quotes, Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”
There are myriad reasons the Founding Fathers included freedom of the press in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Although many of those founders frequently were targets of criticism in the mass media of the day, they recognized the role of a free press in safeguarding against oppressive government.
Recent presidents, however, have abused their power and undermined our democracy with attacks on the media.
Last week, reports detailed how the Department of Homeland Security during the Trump administration used sensitive government databases, designed to track international terrorists, to investigate as many as 20 American journalists. The revelation reportedly is included in a report from the department’s inspector general.
“This is a flagrant example of a federal agency using its power to examine the contacts of journalists,” Associated Press Executive Editor Julie Pace wrote in a letter to DHS officials. “While the actions detailed in the inspector general’s report occurred under a previous administration, the practices were described as routine.”
Yahoo News and AP said the report also details the surveillance of congressional staff and perhaps members of Congress. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, said, “If true, this abuse of government surveillance powers to target journalists, elected officials and their staff is deeply disturbing.”
President Donald Trump frequently criticized the media, going so far as to call the press the “enemy of the people.” In truth, the press works on behalf of the people, serving as a watchdog against government corruption.
While Trump’s anti-media rhetoric reached extraordinary levels, his administration was not original in using the governmental power to undermine a free press.
In 2013 the Obama administration obtained the records of 20 Associated Press office phone lines and reporters’ home and cellphones as part of an investigation into the disclosure of information about a foiled al-Qaida terrorist plot.
During President Barack Obama’s eight years in office, his administration used the 1917 Espionage Act with vigor, prosecuting more people under the law for leaking sensitive information to the public than all previous administrations combined, according to the Associated Press.
“The Obama administration,” The New York Times Editorial Board wrote at the time, “has moved beyond protecting government secrets to threatening fundamental freedoms of the press to gather news.”
Those freedoms are, indeed, fundamental and are essential to a functioning democracy. An independent press, operating without government interference and seeking only to serve the public, is the difference between a free society and a totalitarian one. Any attack on that independence adds to a constant drip that is eroding this nation’s institutions.
Reinforcing those teetering institutions has been a focus of the Biden administration. Attorney General Merrick Garland recently issued an order prohibiting the seizing of records of journalists in leak investigations.
All of which calls to mind another Jefferson quote: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. … Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.”
