Monthly Archives: May 2017

Its too bad that the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is not deemed as important as the Second, at least to the present occupant of the White House.

And his party.

Last week, President Donald Trump flew to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to lead a campaign rally of his followers. I could not possibly be more thrilled than to be more than 100 miles away from Washington swamp with much, much better people, he told the crowd in the state capitals Farm Show Complex and Expo Center.

In Trump World, the less desirable people left behind were 2,700 well-dressed denizens of that swamp, otherwise known as the White House Correspondents Association, as they gathered in the ballroom of the Washington Hilton Hotel on Connecticut Avenue. Trump is the first president to miss this annual event since 1981 when Ronald Reagan, who was recovering after an assassination attempt, nevertheless called in to extend greetings to the assembled.

Trump only had to travel 1.5 miles from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW to the hotel, but chose to create an event where he could, yet again, bash the media. Instead, he went to Harrisburg. And to add insult to First Amendment injury, the day before, he appeared in Atlanta and addressed the annual convention of the National Rifle Association, an organization which robustly uses the First Amendment to promote the Second.

Where Richard Nixon once said that the press is your enemy, Trump is following in his footsteps. In slightly more than 100 days, Trump has unleashed a torrent of vitriol against those who work with words. Whether its the failing New York Times, dishonest reporters, or fake news in general, we are enduring a continuous episode of the surreal Reality Show hosted by that veteran showman, veteran self-promoter, veteran Atlantic City Boardwalk pitchman, but, most importantly, political rookie Donald Trump. Yes, Trump the rookie, the supreme narcissist who skipped the minor leagues by not running for sheriff, mayor, or Congress but thinks he can be successful in the majors by starting at the very top.

When you examine his often volatile reaction to critical news coverage, the rookie element and glaring inexperience is telling.

Trump, who must be a frequent patient of dermatologists due to his incredibly thin skin, has spent a lifetime threatening others with lawsuits. Now, his Chief of Staff, Reince Priebus, dropped a not so subtle warning that the administration is examining current libel law to allow the president to sue publications for stories he does not like. According to Talking Points Memo:

Indeed, the President often said during the Presidential campaign, and since, that he wished to change libel laws so that he would be able to sue for purposefully negative, and horrible and false articles and hit pieces.

The Supreme Court has ruled that libel damages can be awarded to public officials only as a result of actual malice. Unintentional factual inaccuracies are protected by the First Amendment, as is speech critical of the President.

As observers of this slow-motion train wreck of an administration, we see its attempts to pivot on major stories and scandals that are damaging and show the incompetence, conflicts-of-interest, and perhaps most damaging of all, its compromised nature due to Russian involvement in the election campaign. There is no hope for change, as behavior modification therapy will not work for Trump and his ghastly crew. The only question at this point might be if the train stops completely through resignation or impeachment.

As part of the cleanup of the mess created by Trump and his attacks on the First Amendment, it should be an expectation that future presidents, regardless of party, will tone down the homage extended to the NRA and instead honor the threshold importance of the First Amendment by appearing at the meetings of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, News Media Alliance, or even the Society of Professional Journalists . The damage caused by Trump and the shrill atmosphere created by the attacks on free speech and constitutional guarantees should demand no less.

We should hope.

In what seems another time and certainly a very different country, President John F. Kennedy felt it necessary to address the American Newspaper Publishers Association, now called the News Media Alliance, at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York on April 27, 1961. The president spoke a little more than a week after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba, assome in the Kennedy Administration felt that clues about the impending invasion were published in some major papers, possibly giving the Castro regime advance notice of the military action.

At the very beginning of his address, President Kennedy provided some ambiguity as to what was the purpose of his speech:

I have selected as the title of my remarks tonight The President and the Press. Some may suggest that this would be more naturally worded The President Versus the Press. But those are not my sentiments

The words that follow are provided here as a model for what a future, sane, and thoughtful president might say to the country as a way to provide a denouement on the damage caused by the Trump Administration in its challenge of the very role and purpose of an independent press and media.

President Kennedy continued:

No President should fear public scrutiny of his program. For from that scrutiny comes understanding, and from that understanding comes support or opposition. And both are necessary. I am not asking your newspapers to support the Administration, but I am asking your help in the tremendous task of informing and alerting the American people. For I have complete confidence in the response and dedication of our citizens whenever they are fully informed.

In perhaps the most eerie part of this long-ago speech, Kennedy might have looked into the future, offering a clear rationale for the very idea of a Fourth Estate, and by doing so providing the country with an antidote to act against the emergence of an authoritarian, Trump-like figure.

Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed and no republic can survive. That is why the Athenian lawmaker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy. And that is why our press was protected by the First Amendment the only business in America specifically protected by the Constitution not primarily to amuse and entertain, not to emphasize the trivial and the sentimental, not to simply give the public what it wants but to inform, to arouse, to reflect, to state our dangers and our opportunities, to indicate our crises and our choices, to lead, mold, educate and sometimes even anger public opinion.

In our present time, it is the American public that is angry about the course of the country and the shrill tone of the president. The media only mirrors that anger and skepticism, yet Trump has labeled it the enemy.

He is wrong. Anyone who would attempt to intimidate the media or threaten to craft more restrictive libel laws as a way to undercut the First Amendment is the enemy of any citizen, irrespective of political persuasion.

It was Thomas Jeffersons belief that an informed citizenry is at the heart of a dynamic democracy. Likewise, it is also accurate to assert that in its watchdog and surveillance function, our nations media is performing quite well in informing and thus arming the citizenry against possible tyranny by a potentially authoritarian government.

Once upon a time, we had a thoughtful, articulate, dynamic president who spoke in complete sentences and who helped to define the role of a free press in the twentieth century. What he reminded us about was that there was only one type of business in this country that is afforded constitutional protection, yet it falls upon us in the twenty-first century to protect that business from presidential threats and intimidation, and, if necessary, peacefully assemble to prevent a coercive, powerful government from sustaining such threats.

Let us inform our political leaders in the executive and legislative branches that we can peacefully assemble without threat of arms, and that the pen in the form of a constitutionally protected media is mightier than the sword posed by the NRA and Second Amendment devotees.

We must therefore inform the uninformed President Trump that the First Amendment precedes the Second and is thus the most important guarantor of a free society. No other countervailing force, not Trump or the NRA, can change that.

For the future of this society, it cannot be any other way.

____________ Denis Smith is a retired school administrator and a former consultant in the Ohio Department of Educations charter school office. He writes about education issues as well as politics and constitutional reform.

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In Trump World, Wouldn't It Be Great If The First Amendment Was As ... - Plunderbund

Editorial note: A shorter, word-length-appropriate version of this opinion column was submitted to the Washington Post. It was rejected. Every outlet always and should always have the right to accept or reject material according to their own editorial standards. Yet under the circumstances, with the subject at the White House Correspondents Dinner being the First Amendment and with Washington being at the very center of a dispute between the media and President Trump, it would seem a column addressing the subject with fresh, newsworthy comments from three prominent conservatives Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and The American Spectators own R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. would be newsworthy. The Post disagreed. Which my own editorial comment here should highlight yet again just why the rise of conservative media and why President Trump gets applauded at rallies by so many Americans who, like the President, believe the mainstream media to be dishonest in its coverage.

The banner was hard to miss.

Hanging high above the head table of the White House Correspondents Dinner, underneath the name of the group was this line in all caps:

CELEBRATING THE FIRST AMENDMENT

Not to be an impolite guest (I was present courtesy of CNN) but the question that I had when I saw this banner was: Really?

In the course of the evening Watergates journalistic heroes Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein spoke, with Woodward saying Mr. President, the media is not fake news. Bernstein made a point of saying that what was always needed was The best obtainable version of the truth, adding Yes, follow the money, but follow, also, the lies. This latter theme was also that of the WHCA President Jeff Mason of Reuters, who said this in addressing the absent President Trump directly: We are not fake news, we are not failing news organizations and we are not the enemy of the American people.

Meanwhile a 100 miles north in Harrisburg, President Trump was speaking to an arena-full of Americans who cheered him on when he attacked the incompetent, dishonest media and said: If the medias job is to be honest and to tell the truth, the media deserves a very, very big fat failing grade.

What caused me to question the message on that banner, and understand instantly why the Presidents audience cheered him on when he attacked the media, was the absence of two words from anyone on the podium. Those two words: Ann Coulter.

For the better part of a couple weeks Coulter, the conservative columnist, author, and Trump supporter, had been at the very center of a drama that went right to the heart of the First Amendment. Invited to speak at the University of California at Berkeley, she was unable to do so because of the very real threat of violence from the American Left. Let me say that again. An American columnist was denied her First Amendment rights with threats to her physical safety (and that of anyone considering attending her speech) and there was not word one about this from Messrs. Woodward and Bernstein or Mason.

How could such an obvious omission happen? To this conservative the reason was clear. What was on display all evening was not support for the First Amendment but rather support for liberals and their use of the First Amendment.

I decided to ask three prominent conservatives all of whom have had their First Amendment rights targeted over the years whether they have received support from the White House Correspondents Association when they were under attack.

Rush Limbaugh responded to my question as follows:

Of course not. Clinton called me a racist for defending Janet Reno after she was criticized by John Conyers. Rush only defended her because she was being attacked by a black guy. I was at the USA Today table. There was a huge reaction in the whole room. Disbelief and shock. Some embarrassed laughter, mostly groans. Chris Matthews approached me at the end of the dinner and said I could not let that stand, the president of the United States calling you a racist cannot stand.

He (Clinton) also agreed that I was a Big Fat Idiot while honoring Frankens book.

Sean Hannitys response was equally blunt:

1) Not one liberal. Not one speaks vs the weapon of Boycotts used vs conservatives to silence them. I call it Liberal Fascism. An organized and well funded effort to silence political opposition.

2) The media ran with a CHEAP HEADLINE last Saturday and Sunday about me after a false charge was made by a woman who has a nearly 15 year history of telling proven lies about me. 2 days after OReilly fired, she says for the first time ever that in 2003 that I invited her to a hotel room in Detroit.

You would think the media would do just a simple, basic, rudimentary, fundamental GOOGLE SEARCH and not run with such a slanderous headline.

3) Has anyone in the media ever spoken out about the payments being made to individuals to monitor EVERY SINGLE CONSERVATIVE radio and TV host in the hopes the hosts say something that can be used to boycott and silence them? Do they care to examine where these funds come from?

4) Has any liberal ever stood up for any conservative thats been silenced on a college campus?? How many liberals spoke out for Coulter?

I also made the query to the founding editor ofThe American Spectator,where I am a columnist. Long before I began writing for theSpectator,R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. and theSpectatorwere engaged in numerous investigations of then-President Clinton. One dealt with the Presidents relationships with various women. (It was theSpectatorwhich first brought to light the relationship between then-Governor Clinton and a state employee named Paula later revealed as Paula Jones.) The otherSpectatorinvestigation dealt with assorted charges made about Clinton political dealings in Arkansas. The latter resulted in a recommendation from then-Deputy U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder that The American Spectator itself be investigated by a special prosecutor, an investigation that lasted fourteen months and was a considerable expense in legal fees for a political magazine. There was, Tyrrell tells me, not a word from the White House Correspondents Association defending theSpectators First Amendment rights.

What are these three conservatives saying? In short and they are not alone in the conservative world there is a real belief that support for the First Amendment is situational with liberals and with the White House Correspondents Association. (Or am I repeating myself?)

Whether it is Ann Coulter at Berkeley or left-wing efforts to get Limbaugh and Hannity off the air or the use of the Department of Justice to investigateThe American Spectator or countless incidents on college campuses across the country in each and every case and so many more it seems to be liberals communicating to conservatives that what they really believe is the First Amendment for me but not for thee.

Following the WHCA dinner, the groups president, Mr. Mason, appeared on Tucker Carlsons Fox show to discuss the dinner. The conversation, in part, included this:

Turning to the ideology of the press, Carlson cited astudy published by Politico, which revealed that no registered Republicans were part of the White House press corps.

If you had a White House press corps that was 100 percent middle-aged white men, Carlson told Mason, there would be a full-blown outcry about the lack of diversity and I bet you $100 you would weigh in and say, Youre right, this doesnt look like America.

Do you think its OK that there are zero registered Republicans in the White House press corps? the host asked.

I think whats important is that we have a press corps thats made up of journalists who report the truth and who robustly report on the president of the United States, Mason answered.

Carlson wrapped up the discussion by asking Mason, Is political diversity important to you?

Is diversity important? Of course, Mason said. Is it my job to talk about what journalists in the White House press corps do? Yes. What they do is report the news regardless of what political party controls the White House.

I wish I believed that, Carlson answered. I dont.

That Saturday night at the Washington Hilton I too heard nothing to abuse conservatives of that view. To borrow from my CNN colleague Carl Bernstein, when it comes to the best obtainable version of the truth on liberal support for the First Amendment, for conservatives that support seems far too often to be situational at best.

Which in turn makes it easy to understand exactly why President Trumps attacks on the media received cheers at that rally in Harrisburg.

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The White House Correspondents' Association and the First Amendment - American Spectator

Last year, students at Carmel High School were allowed to put up an anti-abortion sign. This year, a different group of students were told they could not hang a pro-abortion rights sign.

That is discrimination based on viewpoint, and that is a clear violation of the First Amendment. Naturally its time to bring in the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana and take the school system to court.

Of course the story is a tad more complicated than that, and the episode should serve as a warning for school districts inclined to stray from their mission under the false impression that they must accommodate every student demand for this or that right.

A school is not a microcosm of the country, with students counted as citizens and school officials standing in for the government. A school is a structured learning environment in which anything not aimed at imparting knowledge must be put aside. True, students dont leave their rights at the schoolhouse door, but the rights they have are not the same as a citizens in dealing with government.

If schools choose to ignore that reality, they owe it to students to have clear rules that are widely disseminated and understood. This is what Carmel failed to do.

The school at first took down the anti-abortion sign last year. But was it put it back up for 10 days after the conservative legal group Liberty Counsel threatened legal action, arguing that the school had allowed other ideological messages on signs, including a donkey on a sign for a student club for Democrats and the use of a rainbow and the word pride on signs for a group supporting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students. The anti-abortion sign said 3,000 Lives Are Ended Each Day and featured the word abortion changed to say adoption.

The school says groups may post signs only if they advertise group meetings. Lawyers for the school district say the new sign did not include the groups name or meeting details, which the sign last year did. But the ACLU, like the Liberty Counsel before, is citing all the previous ideological signs allowed.

Judge Tanya Walton Pratt of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana says the controversy over the new sign opens a can of worms, doesnt it?

Indeed, it does. And its not the students who are at fault.

(Fort Wayne) News-Sentinel.

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Another fine First Amendment mess - Lebanon Reporter

First Amendment rights rudely dismissed at UB

Fascists on the political left have once again invaded the University at Buffalo. The schools own independent student publication, the Spectrum, said it all in the headline of a May 2 article: A Campus Divided: Robert Spencers visit met with chaos and opposition.

All kinds of folks, draped dramatically in their own vacuous definitions of supposed rights and alleged abuses, bristled at the prospect of Spencer even being on campus. Yet, notwithstanding an official invitation to speak, his First Amendment rights were rudely dismissed and abused by trolls living in droves under the bridges of modern-day academia. As the article described it, the constant heckling from the crowd made it near impossible for him to complete a full sentence. The vaunted values of inclusion, tolerance, fairness and free speech clearly do not exist on this hate-filled campus.

Let these fascists and their obsequious faculty supporters reap the whirlwind they have sown and dwell in the place for which they clamor. So long as Americans vigorously defend their Constitution, however, such pernicious vermin will not find it here. Caveat civis!

Lee C. Broad

Amherst

Originally posted here:
Letter: First Amendment rights rudely dismissed at UB - Buffalo News

Idaho Education News won the Idaho Press Clubs First Amendment Award during the annualjournalismbanquet Saturday night in Boise.

Editor Jennifer Swindell and data and policy analyst Randy Schrader won the award for catching the Caldwell School Districts board of trustees violating the states open meeting law when it hired superintendent Shalene French.

The First Amendment Award is given for work by Idaho journalists, in any medium, that advances the cause of freedom of information in Idaho in the public interest.

Kevin Richert also earned an honorable mention in the First Amendment category for a separate story that caught the State Board of Education violating open meeting laws.

Idaho EdNews was honored withseveral other awards Saturday. Journalist Clark Corbin won second place for reporter of the year in the all media category, and Richert was named honorable mention for reporter of the year.

Multimedia journalist Andrew Reed won a first place award for best use of interactivity for his first day of school photo content, and Idaho Education Trends won a first place award in the special purpose website category.

A complete list of awards and winners is available online at the Idaho Press Clubs website.

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Idaho EdNews wins First Amendment Award - Idaho EdNews