The Just Security Podcast

Keeping Track of the Big Picture--Challenges to Press Freedom and Beyond

• Just Security • Episode 110

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May 3rd marks World Press Freedom Day. This year especially, press freedom is under threat in the United States from a range of directions: from hostile official rhetoric and actions to self-censorship and systemic appeasement, to just basic information overload. As the Trump administration continues to “flood the zone,” how can we assess individual developments to discern broader trends that might help us better understand what’s happening, its impact and what we can do about it?  

Just Security Executive Editor and Professor of Law at American University, Rebecca Hamilton, joins Just Security Washington Senior Editor, Viola Gienger, to discuss how to grapple with the onslaught of news developments in the field of press freedom and discern broader trends. 

Show Notes:  

Viola Gienger: Each year, May 3rd marks World Press Freedom Day, and the trends worldwide have not been looking good in recent years. This year especially, press freedom is under threat in the United States from a range of directions, from hostile official rhetoric and actions to self-censorship and systemic appeasement to just basic information overload as the Trump administration continues to “flood the zone.” How can we assess individual developments to discern broader trends that might help us better understand what's happening and its impact and what we can do about it?

This is the Just Security Podcast. I'm your host, Viola Gienger, Washington Senior Editor at Just Security, and joining me on the show today is Rebecca Hamilton, an Executive Editor of Just Security and Professor of Law at American University Washington College of Law.

Her research and teaching focus on national security law, international law and criminal law, and the ways that technology and new media are influencing developments in these areas. She draws not only on her legal expertise, but also on her previous career as a journalist for The Washington Post and Reuters. Just Security just published a fascinating interactive graphic that Beth developed with Just Security’s Pooja Shah, that aims to grapple with the onslaught of news developments in the field of press freedom and discern broader trends. Similar methodology might be applicable to other issues facing the American public as well. 

Bec, thank you so much for joining the show. You wrote an article for Just Security back in February entitled, “Connecting the Dots: Trump's Tightening Grip on Press Freedom,” and that got you thinking about the general idea of how to get our heads around the barrage of news and executive actions coming at the American public and at the world, for that matter. Talk a little bit about how that came to you and how you were thinking about that.

Rebecca Hamilton: Thanks, Viola, it's great to be discussing this. So, this project came out of a very sort of personal and pragmatic, deeply pragmatic space, in the sense that I, like so many of us, was feeling inundated with pieces of breaking news and feeling overwhelmed by that, and was trying to figure out a way to basically not lose the forest for the trees, because I think when we are receiving the news on a drip-feed basis, it's easy to focus on each item in isolation and not see how each of those items is contributing to a bigger picture and also it relates also to sort of how we respond. Are we responding to each individual action that is being taken, or are we able to take a step back and see the bigger threats that are on the horizon, or, in some cases already here, in order to be able to respond more systematically to those?

So I was looking for myself, first of all, and hopefully for the public at large, to find a way to synthesize all of the news that we are being hit with, in order to make some meaning of it, so that we can stay on top of how state power is being, I think we can say, at this point, weaponized to attack freedom of the press, but also other pillars of democracy. 

Viola: Right. That’s really interesting and we'll get back to that. First, let's talk a little bit about press freedom itself and the threats that that we're seeing materialize today, especially with World Press Freedom Day on May 3rd. So, talk a little bit more about what you see as the threats today, the details of those and how they develop into a bigger picture. 

Bec: Sure. So, I think when I went through this process of synthesizing what was out there, there are a few key issues that emerge, and they are different in source and scope and scale, but they all contribute to a shrinking of the space for independent media. So, there's a cluster of actions that are being taken that just create a generally hostile working environment for journalists. So, this is, you know, the public berating of journalists and journalism from the seat of the White House itself. It's the lawsuits that are going after journalists, so just the general effort to chill journalistic reporting that is free and fair and done without favor. 

But those attacks on journalists and the practice of journalism are playing out within a broader media ecosystem, and we're seeing the state using its power, or at least the Trump administration using its power, in ways that both give benefits or the promise of benefits to media outlets that align with the Trump administration's views and threaten outlets that are seeking to remain independent. And so, it's helpful to catalog those developments on both sides as well, and when you look at the benefits being promised to state-aligned outlets, you see, it's the meetings in the Oval Office and the praise around particular individuals, but it's also the promise of, well, if we behave in a way that aligns with the Trump administration, then it's more likely that, you know, our merger deal will be approved, for example.  

And so, when you have the owners of media outlets starting to make calculations in those terms, there's something else which emerges. And this is another of the trends that I've been tracking, which are these editorial flare-ups that are happening at different news organizations. We saw it first during the campaign at the LA Times and The Washington Post, but it's continued since then, most recently, and notably with 60 Minutes. And what those are speaking to is the encroachment of self-censorship. I was a foreign correspondent in Sudan before I was in my current role, and one of the editors that that I admired most, who was used to trying to run a paper under a situation of dictatorship, would always say that the biggest threat was when his journalists began to censor themselves. He would encourage them to go out and report what the real story was and practice writing it up, even in situations where they knew that the printing press would be shut down and it wouldn't go out, because that's how pernicious It is when self-censorship starts to take hold. And it's exactly that battle that we're seeing in these very high-profile resignations of journalists at The Washington Post, at the LA Times and at CBS.

Then, that was sort of in terms of benefits to media outlets that align with the Trump administration. But there's a flip side of that, of course, which is the threats and the outright attacks on outlets that are not willing to line up and just espouse the Trump administration's views. And we're really seeing the weaponization of state power against, for example, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the call to remove funding that Congress has already passed for PBS and for NPR, but also the use of the FCC to launch investigations, or in some cases, to reinstate investigations that have previously been deemed not to have merit against these different actors that are seen as not being sufficiently aligned with the Trump administration's views. And all of that is happening in parallel with a more general erosion of public access to decision-making by the state. So, that's what we've seen, for example, with the effort to keep Associated Press reporters out of the White House press pool, and other ways of constraining access that journalists used to have, for example, in the Pentagon, to be able to deliver on the spot breaking news out to the public. 

Viola: That's really helpful to have all of that lined up like that. So, you're highlighting both direct attacks on press freedom in the United States and more subtle forms of appeasement by the media organizations themselves, of the Trump administration and Trump allies. Is there a way to quantify like what you see as the most dangerous trend? Is it overt government aggression, or is it the internal self-censorship and compromise within the media outlets? Or do you see all of those sort of working in conjunction?

Bec: So, certainly, I think they're working to bolster, in a negative way, each other, and I wouldn't want to try and quantify exactly which is the greater of the threats. What I would say, though, is that when there are aggressive actions, you know, barring the Associated Press from the White House press pool, for example, that was something that I think everyone in the public could clearly see was a break from what we have been used to, and it was obviously an attack on press freedom.

And so, in some ways, I guess I'm more worried about the sets of issues that are a little less overtly egregious, and this is why I've been paying attention from the beginning to these sort of editorial flare ups at newspapers that for most of the public, just they don't really hit in any meaningful way. It just seems like, oh well, they had a dispute over something, but it's a one-off kind of issue.

But I think it's important to understand that that is equally as challenging for sustaining a robust reporting system, and in some ways, it's these more sort of pernicious threats that we need to pay more attention to, just because it's easier to lose them in the flurry of news activity. 

Viola: And there's also the impact on the general public's level of knowledge and factual understanding of developments, whether it's here in the United States, when we're talking about American news organizations that are focused on U.S. audiences, or abroad when we're talking about the kind of news that people all over the world rely on from American outlets, whether they're privately owned or government owned.

But there's been some significant pushback within news organizations, either to moves that their own owners are making, or by news organizations against others who are seeking to undermine them. What trends are you seeing in that ebb and flow as of this point? 

Bec: It's a really mixed bag. What I will say is that I have enormous faith in journalists, and they are proving me right in the sense that we've seen some really, truly brave pushback. You know, one always sort of can look at a situation from the outside and think, well, if I was in in the situation of being under pressure to conform my views in a certain way. I would never do it, and, you know, I would leave my job. But to actually do that in real life is a much harder call, and yet, we've been seeing journalists do it. So, there's definitely been pushback from journalists. 

And then there has been some instances, and I wish it was more, I'm concerned it's not more, but there have been some instances of pushback from media owners and at the publishing level also. And there, it's been heartening to see that, for example, when the Associated Press went to court over the decision to bar it from the White House press pool, that courts understood the argument that was being made, that it was indeed a violation of the First Amendment, and responded accordingly. So, the process in the courts is slower than the news cycle runs on, but we are seeing to the extent that these issues are going before courts, we're seeing some positive pushback, and so we've just got to hope that those sites of resistance to these overall trends continue.

But it is certainly very discouraging to see efforts at appeasement by some of the most well-funded media corporations who are in the best position, honestly, to push back against encroachment on their freedoms. So, we'll have to see how it plays out. But each positive development, each act of resistance, each time that a journalist says, no, it's not okay to censor my voice, each time an outlet says, you are violating our constitutional rights, and we will take it to court — that, you know, the courage is contagious. That line is as true here as it is everywhere else. 

Viola: So, let's get back to that idea of the big picture. If you could expand just a little bit about how that big picture tracker approach works in practice and how it might be adapted to monitor threats beyond press freedom in other issue areas? 

Bec: Sure, and let me just say, first of all, to take the chance, to send a huge thanks to the Just Security team that was working behind the scenes to put this graphic together. I certainly felt as though I needed a visual representation of what was happening in order to really stay on top of it. And so, by categorizing each sort of development that is happening in this space into a particular bucket, whether it is, you know, the creating of a hostile media environment or self-censorship taking hold, or direct attacks on media outlets, I needed to see it in one place on a page, rather than trying to read through a lot of different news articles. 

And something that could be sustained over time, because my expectation, unfortunately, is that we could take a snapshot of this graphic today and do the same thing in six months’ time, and the picture is going to look worse. And I think it's important for us, in, you know, our future selves, in six months’ time, to see that progression, because I think if you're just living through it day by day, it's too easy to lose sight and it's too easy to start to normalize the situations that we find ourselves in. And so, by monitoring this over time, I'm hoping that it can serve as a sort of defense mechanism to that instinct towards normalization, and just gives us some kind of clarity about what exactly is happening, and therefore helps guide our responses to it. 

There have certainly been moments in this past, you know, we're at the 100-day mark, where I thought, oh, maybe I'm overreacting. Maybe I'm sort of catastrophizing about what the threats are to press freedom. And then when I take a step back and remind myself of what the overall big picture looks like, I can see that, no, actually, this is really what's happening. It is not just a news of the day story. It is part of a bigger picture. 

Viola: Thank you. That's really helpful. And I think it's, it's especially helpful too, for any of us who are tempted to think about the idea that it can't happen here, so to speak, right? And so, when you see it illustrated, when you see it all together like that, and you look at that trend, it's a sobering moment for sure. Is there anything else that you'd like to add at this point to help us think through this, anything specific that you haven't already mentioned that we might want to look for going forward?

Bec: I think I just want to underscore again, and I think this is one of these things that we can't say enough in enough different forums, that if we lose freedom of the press, we've lost democracy. There is no way for us as people to be in a democracy if we don't have access to information about the world around us, the reality that is unfolding in places that we as individual people can't get to ourselves. And journalism serves many different functions. One of it is to report on how state power is being used, and not just to report whatever the Trump administration would like to tell us about how it's using state power, but to report on how it's actually using state power, in order to inform decisions that we make as a polity about next steps in terms of elections, at the very least.

But journalism also serves other purposes, such as giving us as individuals access to information about things that are happening outside our immediate vicinity, building empathy with populations that we perhaps don't get to interact with every day, and just understanding that even as our individual lives are affected to very different degrees in this moment, depending on how we are placed in society, that just because one’s, you know, particular life is not feeling the direct brunt of some of these policies yet perhaps, it doesn't mean that people, our fellow Americans and people in our community are not feeling those effects directly, and journalists have a role in conveying those stories and making sure that we're all informed, so that we can ensure, in turn, that our representatives truly take on that role of representation.

So, again, just to underscore, that's why I'm so kind of animated in the preservation of press freedom. And I think you're right. There's such a reflex in the United States which has press freedom enshrined in its First Amendment, which has a robust tradition of press freedom, although we could have a longer conversation about the degree to which that has held up in practice over the years. But certainly, that's the narrative that makes it easy for our first reflex in the face of this to be, oh, well, that's not — that's something that happens elsewhere, and that's not true. This is something that is happening here right now, and we should be alarmed about it. 

The other thing is that, of course, press freedom isn't the only pillar of democracy, and other pillars of democracy are under attack right now. You know, if I think about just the rule of law as a law professor and threats to judicial independence, the right to counsel, how legal representation is being done —these are other things that we're seeing unfold daily in the news piecemeal, where I would also love to see a sort of single visual that keeps tabs over time of the encroachment of state power into these spaces that need to be defended against. 

Viola: That's really helpful and a very important note to end on today. Rebecca Hamilton, Professor at American University School of Law, thank you so much for joining us today. 

Bec: My pleasure. Always great to talk to you, Viola. 

Viola: This episode was hosted by me, Viola Gienger, and produced by Maya Nir with help from Pooja Shah and Clara Apt. Special thanks to our guest, Rebecca Hamilton. Check out Bec’s interactive graphic on this idea, titled, “The Trump Administration's Use of State Power: Keeping Track of the Big Picture,” on the Just Security website. And don't miss the article she wrote that was the genesis of this idea, “Connecting the Dots: Trump's Tightening Grip on Press Freedom.” And to learn more about World Press Freedom Day, you'll find a host of resources at the website of the UN Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO. If you enjoyed this or any of our episodes, please give us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Thank you.