[WASHINGTON, DC] – Today, U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), U.S. Representative Eric Swalwell (CA-15), and U.S. Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) introduced the Journalist Protection Act to make physical attacks and threats of such attacks against journalists a federal crime. Today’s bill introduction comes at the beginning of Sunshine Week, when we recognize the importance of free and unfettered access to information. A free press is critical in helping to shine light on our government and illuminate the challenges facing our country.
““The values celebrated during Sunshine Week – accountability through transparency, access to public information, and freedom of the press – are under attack like never before. Under this administration, reporters face a near-constant barrage of verbal threats, casting the media as enemies of the American people and possible targets of violence. This bill makes clear that engaging in any kind of violence against members of the media will simply not be tolerated,” said Blumenthal.
“From tweeting #FakeNews to proclaiming his contempt for the media during campaign rallies, the President has created a hostile environment for members of the press,” said Swalwell. “A healthy democracy depends on a free press unencumbered by threats of violence. We must protect journalists in every corner of our country if they are attacked physically while doing their job, and send a strong, clear message that such violence will not be tolerated. That is what my bill, the Journalist Protection Act, would do.”
“Over 200 years ago, our Founding Fathers had the foresight to recognize the importance of a free press to a fledgling democracy. Now, more than ever, their importance can’t be overstated,” said Menendez. “Despite the dangerous rhetoric coming from the Trump Administration, and yet another disturbing attack on a journalist covering a MAGA rally, a free press will never be the enemy of the people. A free, and independent press—a strong Fourth Estate—is essential to the American people and our democracy, ensuring an informed public and holding those in power accountable. In the spirit of Sunshine Week we must work to make government more transparent and to protect the journalists dedicated to ensuring that reality.”
Both before and since taking office, President Trump has blatantly stoked a climate of extreme hostility toward the press. He has called the press “the enemy of the American people,” and described mainstream media outlets as “a stain on America.” He once tweeted a GIF video of himself body-slamming a person with the CNN logo superimposed on that person’s face, and retweeted a cartoon of a “Trump Train” running over a person with a CNN logo on its head.
The Journalist Protection Act makes it a federal crime to intentionally cause physical harm or threaten physical harm to a journalist while he or she is doing their job. It represents a clear statement that assaults against people engaged in reporting is unacceptable, and helps ensure law enforcement is able to punish those who interfere with newsgathering.
Such antagonistic rhetoric encourages violence against journalists. In March 2017, OC Weekly journalists said they were assaulted by demonstrators at a Make America Great Again rally in Huntington Beach, California. The following August, a reporter was punched in the face for filming anti-racism counter-protestors in Charlottesville, Virginia. At a rally hosted by the President in El Paso, Texas just last month, a man in a Make America Great Again hat attacked a BBC reporter and yelled expletives directed at “the media.”
Citing President Trump’s rhetoric bashing the media, the international organization Reporters Without Borders dropped the United States’ ranking in its annual World Press Freedom Index by two points, to 45 overall, last April.
The bill is supported by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and by News Media for Open Government, a broad coalition of news media and journalism organizations working to ensure that laws, policies and practices preserve and protect freedom of the press, open government and the free flow of information in our democratic society.
“American journalists are facing assaults, threats, intimidation and even murder simply for fulfilling their First Amendment duties by reporting the news,” said Bernie Lunzer, president of The NewsGuild, a division of the CWA. “The Journalist Protection Act strengthens the free press that’s essential to our democracy.”
“Now more than ever, our industry needs the Journalist Protection Act to ensure both our members and their equipment have an extra layer of defense from attacks,” said Charlie Braico, president of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, also a CWA division. “It’s also another way of saying in these turbulent times that yes, the First Amendment matters – and it’s worth protecting.”
“A journalist should not have to worry about threats of harassment or physical attacks solely for doing their jobs and informing the public,” said Melissa Wasser, Coalition Director for News Media for Open Government. “Forty-eight journalists faced physical attacks while gathering and reporting the news in 2018, as documented by the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker. More than two dozen newsrooms have received hoax bomb threats, disrupting their operations. Not only is the role of the news media in our democracy under attack, but the safety of individual journalists is threatened. The Journalist Protection Act would not elevate journalists to a special status, but rather would ensure they receive the same protections if attacked while gathering and reporting the news.”
Original co-sponsors of the Journalist Protection Act in the House include David Cicilline (RI-1), Steve Cohen (TN-9), Debbie Dingell (MI-12), Hank Johnson (GA-4), Ro Khanna (CA-17), Andy Levin (MI-9), Gwen Moore (WI-4), Eleanor Holmes Norton (DC), Bobby Rush (IL-1), Darren Soto (FL-9), and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL-23).
Newspapers across the country have been helping the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund (
The New England Society of News Editors
On Campus Speech: Thanks, Mr. President — But No Thanks
Gene Policinski is president and chief operating officer of the Freedom Forum Institute. He can be reached at gpolicinski@freedomforum.org, or follow him on Twitter at @genefac.
However, regrettably, they should not. Keep reading, please.
Taking a shortcut through the First Amendment in the name of free speech is not a good idea — and that’s what Trump’s approach will be, no matter how admirable the stated goal of encouraging and protecting the rights of all in university communities to speak freely.
At first hearing, President Trump’s recent announcement of a planned presidential order to mandate free speech on college campuses might seem to be just what free expression advocates would support.
Trump’s approach is to tie freedom of speech to federal funding for universities: “If they want our dollars, and we give it to them by the billions…Free speech. If they don’t, it will be costly. That will be signed soon,” he told the Conservative Political Action Conference annual convention.
Conservatives have long complained — in my view, with justification at some higher-ed institutions — that liberal academics have created an atmosphere where views of faculty or outside speakers from “the right” are unwelcome. In recent years, a number of high-profile, controversial speakers claiming conservative credentials have been heckled, harassed or prevented from speaking.
In 2017, conservative author Ann Coulter canceled a speech at the University of California, Berkeley, amid fears of violent student protest. At Texas Southern University, Houston, a speech by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, was cancelled because of student opposition.
In announcing his initiative last weekend, Trump cited a Feb. 19 incident in which a man recruiting for a conservative group was punched by one of two men who confronted him at UC Berkeley. But even that example raises questions about how Trump’s proposed “carrot and stick” approach would work and whether it is appropriate there or elsewhere.
Neither the recruiter nor his assailant was reported to be connected to the university. The attacker was arrested, as existing law provides, regardless of where the punch was thrown. Presumably, local justice will run its course without need of a federal, campus-focused “back-up.”
How would — and should — a university be held accountable for the actions of non-university persons? How many incidents, and what kinds of incidents, must occur to rise to the level of a “free speech penalty” that will punish a campus community of thousands or tens of thousands of students? One, two, 10? Who decides and by what measure? Does a punch count 10 times more on the “penalty tally” than a shouted insult?
And what if the punch takes place on a private university campus? Do we want government bureaucrats imposing “free speech” rules on those institutions now constitutionally outside the government’s purview?
Conservatives and liberals alike would historically seem to stand together in opposing government intervention or control over such private enterprises. We ought not hysterically surrender such rights without considering what might be the next “justified” need to trample the independence of non-public colleges and universities.
Another, larger question: Just how widespread is the conflict over conservative speakers, or the entire issue of liberal versus conservative campus speech conflicts? In recent years, as the Freedom Forum Institute has gathered information, made campus visits and convened discussions nationwide, a few observations have emerged: At the vast majority of colleges and universities, speakers of all stripes come and go without objection — the larger battle is not student protest, but student distraction and disinterest regardless of subject matter.
Perhaps 50 campuses out of 4,000-plus higher-education institutions have been embroiled in controversies that directly engage free speech. Granted, in that small group, a number are high-profile or highly-respected institutions. Worrisome, but not worthy of a blanket government surveillance and review system that would be required to fairly impose such draconian penalties on entire campuses for what are likely the actions of a few.
Rather, let us say openly and clearly that colleges should be held by all of us to the high standard of being marketplaces of ideas. Make that criterion one when considering what college to attend or where to make an alumni donation.
Some would say academic freedom means the right to evaluate and exclude some ideas — to focus on the proven and accepted. However, that can quickly morph into intellectual ossification — the collegiate equivalent of what the French scholar Alexis de Tocqueville warned in the 1830s would be the greatest danger to the United States’ new and innovative commitment to free expression and democracy: The “tyranny of the majority,” in which alternative views would cease to be heard.
Let us follow principles already set out by some leaders in the academic world that decry overt or hidden censorship and disavow the false gods of safety, security and “ideas just too dangerous to be heard.”
As to the latter, yes, there are indeed dangerous ideas and inflammatory speakers with no goal other than self-promotion. But it is a futile and dangerous tactic to attempt to suppress a bad idea or arbitrarily extinguish a flame-throwing speaker — particularly in the Internet Age.
Better to propose a new idea and listen to anyone with ideas worth considering — on or off campus.