Presidents strive to rein in the press out of self-interest

Protecting state secrets is a legitimate responsibility of elected and appointed officials at the highest levels of the federal government. But too often those officials confuse a need to protect national security with a desire to protect themselves from reporting they find embarrassing, distracting or inconvenient.

So while we understand President Donald Trump’s concern with leaks at the White House and other departments within the administration, we must be equally concerned with the potential that overzealous crackdowns have on the public’s right to know what its government is up to.

President Trump is not alone in wanting to control the flow of information from Washington to the electorate. Every president has tried to write his own narrative, some more than others.

President Barack Obama was as guilty as most of restricting access of the press to information. In December 2015, more than 50 journalism and open government organizations complained to the Obama administration about its efforts to hamper reporters from doing their jobs.

Early this year, those same organizations wrote to President-elect Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence urging them to reverse the information-control practices of the Obama administration. But rather than move toward transparency and accountability, the Trump administration chose to ramp up its systematic attacks on a free press that has historically distinguished the United States from much of the rest of the world.

President Trump has long defended his reliance on Twitter as his favored medium and as his way of speaking directly to the people. That alone would be no cause for alarm. But Trump’s use of tweets to label anything he dislikes as “fake news” has become the latest tool in a Republican strategy that reaches back a half-century to delegitimize the press.

Demonization of the press

During his campaign, Trump found the demonization of the press to be an effective tactic. Crowds loved it when he pointed to the press pool and labeled the reporters as dishonest, fake or as enemies of him, or even of the nation.

But there is a world of difference between a candidate speaking to adoring crowds on the campaign trail and a president using the bully pulpit he inherits when he takes up residence in the White House.

In announcing his crackdown following the release of transcripts of Trump’s conversations with leaders of Mexico and Australia, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said, “No one is entitled to surreptitiously fight to advance their battles in the media by revealing sensitive government information.” But that very statement belies this administration’s myopic vision. By reporting on those conversations, the press wasn’t advancing any kind of battle, it was providing a valuable insight into how a president with no government experience talked to fellow leaders of the free world.

What the American people learned is Trump can be just as short tempered and abrasive in conversations with world leaders as he was when responding to hecklers on the campaign trail. That’s not a bad thing for the people to know, and if it causes the president to re-evaluate how he interacts with other presidents and prime ministers, it would be a good thing.

The most dangerous response would be a new effort by a U.S. president to break down the wall of confidentiality between reporters and their sources. Justice Department officials are reviewing guidelines that make it difficult for the government to subpoena journalists about their sources, and would not rule out the possibility a reporter could be prosecuted.

Jailing reporters for refusing to reveal their sources is a serious assault on the First Amendment, and one that would inevitably trickle down from the federal government to state and local courts. Twenty-five years ago, a Mahoning County prosecutor tried to force two Vindicator reporters to reveal their sources in the newspaper’s probe of organized crime. Based on the accepted law at the time, Common Pleas Judge R. Scott Krichbaum squelched a subpoena. But once press protections fall in Washington, they will begin toppling in every state, city and hamlet in the land.

Maintaining a free society is a delicate balancing act, and once the scale is tipped to deny any freedom, including freedom of the press, it is difficult to right the imbalance.