Journalists’ safety ‘is no longer a given’

Fearless reporting, a behind-the-scenes look at how journalism is made – and an unapologetic point of view. Welcome to Chills.

Part

I understand that American voters have a lot to worry about when casting their votes. To me, Donald Trump’s contempt for the press is just one of the many, many reasons I will never vote for him. Press freedom is an issue I care deeply about and consider sacred to our democracy, as do many Americans: 73 percent of adults questioned of the Pew Research Center said this year that press freedom is extremely or very important to the well-being of society. That’s why today’s news of attacks on the American media is so disturbing.

The Committee to Protect Journalists released a report today stating that the safety of journalists ‘can no longer be taken for granted’. The group points to violence, online harassment, legal challenges and police attacks as dangerous threats to the media in our intensely divided country, something too many of us working journalists have experienced since Trump arrived on the scene.

The US Press Freedom Tracker, a nonpartisan news website and database on press freedom (of which CPJ is a member), found that physical attacks on journalists related to their reporting in the US increased exceeded by more than 50 percent this year 2023. In September there were 68 attacks, compared to 45 last year. Additionally, a look at the tracker shows that the number of arrests and criminal charges has tripled since 2023. Still, attacks are down from a high of nearly tenfold in 2020, and arrests and criminal charges are down less than a third so far this year. from what they were in 2020.

Katherine Jacobsen, CPJ program coordinator for the US, Canada and the Caribbean and author of the report, called threats against the media “routine.” Which, in my experience and that of too many of my friends and colleagues, is absolutely true. Merely being online with a byline – especially for female journalists – comes with death threats, rape threats and generally violent, near-constant harassment. Personally, I have been repeatedly attacked as “fake news” (me, not my stories or the media I write for, bizarre) and accused of what these vocal Trump supporters see as the left-wing degradation of American society. Although the barrage of angry words rarely leads to physical violence, it does take its toll.

“Scapegoating journalists not only has consequences for them personally, but also poses serious risks to the public’s right to be informed, a core element of any democracy,” Jacobsen said.

Something I found interesting in the CPJ report was the discussion of “serious threats” to overturn the 1964 Supreme Court case. New York Times Co. to Sullivan. Sullivan That’s what gave the American press robust protection when it comes to defamation prosecutions by government officials. Apparently Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch have both urged the court “to reconsider the case Sullivan case and subsequent legal precedent,” CPJ said.

“Threats to the Sullivan have in turn created an environment in which judges are not dismissing defamation cases as quickly as they used to, leading to longer and more expensive legal proceedings, Kate Bolger, a First Amendment and media attorney at the firm Davis Wright Tremaine, told CPJ. This has serious consequences for a press that is limping after decades of financial pressure.

In general, the environment in which journalists – especially political journalists – work is fraught with contempt, fear of legal prosecution and the expectation of vitriol. This impacts not only those of us who work in the media, but also the public, whose news intake may be limited as a byproduct. The repression of the American media is also reverberating around the world.

As with many aspects of democracy, America’s attitude toward the press has long served as a model for other countries. Our free press and its current legal protections surpass most, if not all, of the rest of the world. What happens here matters to journalists who work under strict government restrictions and under the thumb of violent cartels or gangs.

Roberson Alphonse, head of national news at Le NouvellisteHaiti’s oldest newspaper, emphasized precisely that idea to CPJ. His country’s leaders are watching what happens here to “see if there is a green light,” he said, “for actions such as declaring journalists enemies of the people, as Trump has done.”

Alphonse speaks for many of us, abroad and at home, when he says: “The people using this rhetoric are playing with fire – and they must stop.”

Chills is self-funded, without advertising. If you want to be part of this effort to show how hard it is to report – to send me to places like Ukraine to report for you – I hope you’ll consider subscribing for $50 /year or $7/month.

Give a subscription as a gift