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The Intercept
29-04-2025
- Politics
- The Intercept
Democrats Had a Shot at Protecting Journalists From Trump. They Blew It.
Attorney General Pam Bondi distributed plans inside the Justice Department last week to scrap rules protecting journalists and their sources from surveillance and subpoenas over unflattering coverage and leaks. Bondi's memo leaked to the press immediately. 'This Justice Department will not tolerate unauthorized disclosures that undermine President Trump's policies, victimize government agencies, and cause harm to the American people,' reads the memo, citing recent leaks to the New York Times, Washington Post, and Reuters as examples of the kind of reporting that would no longer be tolerated. 'I have concluded that it is necessary to rescind [former attorney general] Merrick Garland's policies precluding the Department of Justice from seeking records and compelling testimony from members of the news media in order to identify and punish the source of improper leaks.' Eliminating these rules is the latest signal of a looming threat to reporters, who could face subpoenas and search warrants for daring to publish information that President Donald Trump would prefer kept secret. Journalists who resist legal demands to disclose their sources could face fines or even jail time. But it didn't have to be this way. Long before Trump was reelected on promises to punish disfavored reporters and outlets, free press advocates warned that the rescinded Justice Department rules were an inadequate shield. The Biden DOJ last revised the rules in 2022 in light of revelations about the first Trump administration's spying on journalists to smoke out leakers. Along the way, even as it offered its own leaks to friendly outlets, the first Trump DOJ routinely ignored prior versions of the rules, which are not enforceable in court. Last year, Senate Democrats had a clear opportunity to make basic protections for journalists a matter of binding federal law, rather than mere policy that could be undone with a vendetta-laced memo. Following years of debate over the proper scope of a federal shield law for reporters, the PRESS Act unanimously passed the House of Representatives and had a bipartisan roster of Senate sponsors, including Republican Lindsay Graham of South Carolina. Then Democratic leaders blew it. For months, they let the PRESS Act sit in the Senate Judiciary committee without a hearing, even though that committee's chair, Dick Durbin, D-Ill., was the bill's co-sponsor. After the election, Trump demanded that Republicans kill the bill. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., swore the PRESS Act was a top priority for his last weeks as Senate majority leader. But neither he nor Durbin put any apparent effort into moving the bill forward, either on its own or as part of must-pass legislation like the defense budget. They offered statements of reassurance and support for the press, but no action. In mid-December, with time running out, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the PRESS Act's lead sponsor, tried to advance it himself, bringing the bill to the Senate floor on a motion to enact it by unanimous consent. A single Republican, Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, blocked it with a grandstanding speech about the evils of leaks and 'America-hating and fame-hungry journalists,' as he'd done with prior versions of the PRESS Act. 'Everyone predicted this would happen in a second Trump administration, yet politicians in a position to prevent it prioritized empty rhetoric over putting up a meaningful fight.' Despite the predictable opposition, Senate Democrats had no strategic plan to counter it — other than a speech by Schumer — and the PRESS Act died at the end of the session. Durbin's office blamed the PRESS Act's failure on Cotton's obstruction but did not answer why Durbin allowed the bill to stall in his committee. Durbin recently announced that he is retiring after more than four decades in Congress. Schumer's office did not respond to The Intercept's questions. 'Every Democrat who put the PRESS Act on the back burner when they had the opportunity to pass a bipartisan bill codifying journalist-source confidentiality should be ashamed,' said Seth Stern, director of advocacy for the Freedom of the Press Foundation, in a statement after Bondi's memo came out. 'Everyone predicted this would happen in a second Trump administration, yet politicians in a position to prevent it prioritized empty rhetoric over putting up a meaningful fight.' Barely three months in, the second Trump DOJ has already launched multiple investigations into reporters' sources for embarrassing stories. In March, Bondi's deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, announced a criminal inquiry over the leak of classified information to the Times about Tren de Aragua that contradicted many of the White House's basic claims about the Venezuelan gang. Last week, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced that she had referred two leaks of classified information to DOJ for criminal investigation, including a 'recent illegal leak to the Washington Post.' Earlier that day, the Post reported new details about Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's use of the Signal app. Gabbard said a third leak referral was 'on its way.' Multiple agencies are forcing federal employees under suspicion of leaking to take polygraph tests, including the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. Hegseth, who is obsessed with finding out who's leaking details of his own terrible security practices, has also threatened to use lie detectors. What procedural protections will remain for journalists as Bondi and her deputies prosecute these investigations is still unknown. Her memo was clear that the Biden-era rules were rescinded but light on details as to what might take their place. The memo referred to recent updates in the DOJ's manual and federal regulations, but updated language has not yet been published and the DOJ did not respond to The Intercept's request for copies. Where the prior rules barred subpoenas against reporters except under narrow circumstances, Bondi's memo emphasized the lack of clear legal protection for journalists against such subpoenas under Supreme Court precedent. Trump 'can and almost certainly will abuse the legal system to investigate and prosecute his critics and the journalists they talk to,' Stern said in his statement. Such abuses can take many forms, including using subpoenas to obtain a reporter's phone and email records, which the first Trump DOJ did for at least eight reporters at three national outlets: the Washington Post, CNN, and the New York Times. The Obama administration tried to force former New York Times reporter James Risen, who later joined The Intercept, to testify about his sources, but eventually dropped the effort. According to Bondi's memo, a subpoena for a reporter's testimony, notes, or correspondence should be 'an extraordinary measure to be deployed as a last resort,' narrowly drawn, and subject to 'enhanced approval and advance-notice procedures,' which Bondi did not spell out. Any arrests of reporters would be subject to her personal go-ahead, as would requests to interrogate journalists. 'Trump is laying the groundwork to lock up reporters who don't rat out their sources who expose crimes by his administration,' Wyden, the PRESS Act's lead Senate sponsor, wrote on Bluesky after the Bondi memo came out. 'I have a bipartisan bill that would make these protections ironclad. It passed the House unanimously (twice) and it was never taken up in the Senate.'
Yahoo
28-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
AG Pam Bondi reverses Biden-era media protections in leak investigations
As last week came to an end, Attorney General Pam Bondi raised eyebrows with some highly provocative rhetoric on Fox News, where the Republican appeared to threaten judges with prosecutions. But that's not all she did on Friday afternoon. NBC News reported: Attorney General Pam Bondi has revoked protections issued by former Attorney General Merrick Garland that offered procedural protections for members of the media from having their records seized or being forced to testify in the course of leak investigations, according to the memo seen by NBC News. As a New York Times report added, the attorney general's internal Justice Department memo 'said that the change was necessary to safeguard 'classified, privileged and other sensitive information' — a far broader set of government secrets than is protected by the criminal code, which focuses primarily on making it illegal to share classified information.' It's striking to see just how far the pendulum has swung in a short period of time on this issue. Around this time four years ago, then-Attorney General Merrick Garland created a policy that prohibited federal prosecutors from going after reporters' private information or forcing them to testify about their confidential sources. Even at the time, this wasn't especially controversial. In fact, there was bipartisan legislation in the last Congress — called the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying Act (also known as the PRESS Act) — that would've codified Garland's policy into federal law. In early 2024, House Republican agreed to bring bill to the floor, it passed without objection. Any one member from the left, right or center could've balked, but no one did. Even in a sharply divided House, this was seen as a consensus issue. Though there was a companion bill in the Senate, which was co-authored by two conservative Republicans, and which enjoyed the backing of far-right media figures such as Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump told GOP senators to reject the legislation, and it died soon after. Now, instead of having a bipartisan measure in place to protect journalists, Bondi has decided to turn back the clock and undo the Biden-era policy — adding new dimensions to the Trump administration's broader offensive against the free press. It's worth emphasizing that Bondi's memo added that there will be procedures in place before members of the media are compelled to testify or their records are seized, but that doesn't change the fact that the Justice Department is prepared to compel journalists to testify and their records will be subject to seizure. This article was originally published on
Yahoo
17-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump Is Using a Familiar Playbook to Erode U.S. Press Freedoms
With U.S. President Donald Trump back in the White House, fears of renewed encroachments on media freedom in the United States have intensified. During his first term, Trump regularly railed against the 'fake news' media, pressured journalists to expose confidential sources and threatened to retaliate against critical press. He escalated these attacks as a candidate last year and ahead of his return to office after winning the election in November, suing several media outlets, endorsing violence against journalists and even vowing to revoke broadcast licenses. The experiences of other backsliding democracies underscore that the threats a second Trump administration pose to U.S. media freedom are real. The most extreme scenarios witnessed in other countries, such as mass arrests of journalists in Turkey or the near-total takeover of private and public media channels in Hungary, remain unlikely in the United States, as the country benefits from a large, diverse media landscape and strong protections of freedom of speech. Yet even vibrant and pluralistic media sectors can erode under pressure and become less effective at overseeing those in power, with negative implications for the health of U.S. democracy. In most countries, initial attacks on media freedom did not threaten the independence of the entire sector. Instead, governments targeted critical journalists or media outlets through public vilification, unfounded lawsuits and new barriers to access. These efforts create an environment of intimidation, undermine the credibility of independent journalism and make quality reporting more difficult. To get more in-depth news and expert analysis on global affairs from WPR, sign up for our free Daily Review newsletter. After the Law and Justice Party, or PiS, came to power in Poland in 2015, for instance, threats against journalists by government supporters escalated, spurred on by public officials or pro-government news outlets. The PiS and its allies also relied on legal intimidation, launching dozens of lawsuits against the independent paper Gazeta Wyborcza. Many of these legal challenges went nowhere, but they had a chilling effect on the Polish media ecosystem. Polish authorities also severely restricted journalists' access to the parliament building and denied them accreditation to political events. Trump already used many of these same tactics during his first term. His disparaging comments about the media are now so commonplace they barely attract attention. Yet his rhetoric continues to have real-world effects: Violence and harassment of U.S. journalists increased in 2024. In November, Trump also demanded that Republican senators kill the bipartisan PRESS Act, which would have protected journalists who refuse to reveal sources. And his administration has moved quickly to strip Pentagon desk space from several legacy outlets to make room for explicitly partisan media like Breitbart. A newer development is his reliance on legal attacks. He has already sued the Des Moines Register and pollster J. Ann Seltzer over pre-election polling, ABC News for defamation and CBS for consumer fraud over their editing of an interview with his Democratic opponent, then-Vice President Kamala Harris. Worryingly, both of the latter news organizations' parent companies—Disney and Paramount Global, respectively—have proven reluctant to fight these allegations in court, even though legal experts believe the cases have little merit. Trump already settled with ABC News for $16 million, and Paramount Global is also reported to be in settlement talks. This precedent may embolden Trump to pursue more lawsuits as an effective tool to harass and intimidate media outlets. Media companies' pre-emptive caving to Trump's pressure underscores a second risk: Governments can use the economic vulnerabilities of the media to exert control. Across various backsliding democracies, public media has proven particularly vulnerable to capture. In Hungary and Poland, for instance, governments pushed through new media laws, purged critical journalists from public outlets and set up politically pliant regulatory bodies. However, they also used private media's dependence on advertising revenue to exert political pressure. The Hungarian government directed its lucrative advertisements to friendly outlets, whereas critical newspapers lost ad revenue as companies feared running afoul of the Fidesz government. In Poland, state-owned companies similarly stopped placing advertisements in critical media while favoring pro-government papers like Gazeta Polska Codziennie. These tactics paved the way for allied business actors to buy out struggling media outlets. In Hungary, conservative business tycoons gradually gained ownership of almost the entire media market, and then donated their TV stations, radio channels and newspapers to a Fidesz-controlled foundation. In Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan similarly relied on allied businesspeople to purchase critical media sources. As of 2024, government-aligned companies controlled over 85 percent of private national media. Compared to other democracies, U.S. public media is small and receives limited federal funding, making it both less influential and less vulnerable to takeover. Still, Republicans have long criticized outlets like NPR and PBS—National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service—for their perceived liberal biases. Under Trump, the new Federal Communications Commission chair, Brendan Carr, has launched an investigation into how member stations air their private sponsorships, suggesting a renewed effort to weaken public media by going after its resources. Defunding would be particularly destructive for local newsrooms and stations in rural areas that heavily depend on federal grants. Yet the bigger risk in the U.S. is the existing consolidation of private media in the hands of a few owners and corporations. For one, conglomerate ownership fuels political polarization. The right-leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group, for instance, now owns 191 local TV stations across the country. These stations not only tend to shift rightward but also spend more time on national politics at the expense of local reporting. Moreover, as the cases of Paramount Global and Disney show, large media conglomerates and billionaire owners may be unwilling to jeopardize their varied business interests to defend journalistic ethics. For instance, Paramount is currently pursuing a multibillion-dollar merger with Skydance Media and thus has a commercial interest in appeasing Trump. Billionaire newspaper owners like Jeff Bezos and Patrick Soon-Shiong—who own the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, respectively—similarly have financial incentives to curry Trump's favor, even if doing so means curtailing their editorial independence. In sum, the primary risk is not Trump allies buying the entire media sector, but that many current owners are wary of direct political confrontation. A final risk to independent media illustrated by other backsliding democracies is the increasing reliance by illiberal leaders on alternative information channels that are not bound by rigorous journalistic standards but often have a much wider reach. As more people get their news from social media, many autocratic governments have expanded their control over online content, for instance by passing laws that compel social media companies to take down content that the government does not like. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has perfected a more subtle playbook: bolstering support by paying tech-savvy influencers to flood online discourse with pro-government content, all the while weakening actors and institutions that could check the accuracy of their claims. Bukele's tactics show the clearest parallels to Trump's use of the attention economy, as unchecked disinformation and ideological echo chambers make direct control less urgent. During his first term, Trump routinely complained that social media companies' content moderation was biased against his administration. After being banned from Twitter, he set up Truth Social as an alternative communication channel. Since then, however, the online landscape has shifted in his favor. Elon Musk's structural changes at X—formerly Twitter—have favored far-right users, and Meta, eager to please the Trump administration, has abandoned third-party fact-checking for being 'too politically biased.' These changes open the door for more disinformation as well as further media fragmentation and polarization as dissatisfied users leave for other, smaller platforms. Trump is also cultivating alternatives to legacy media outlets, beyond his own social network. During his 2024 election campaign, he focused on reaching potential voters not through mainstream media but through the much wider network of YouTube channels, radio shows and podcasts that are neither explicitly political nor bound by strict editorial standards. Continuing this strategy, the White House recently announced that the briefing room will accredit podcasters, bloggers and TikTok content creators. Current threats to independent media as a pillar of U.S. democracy thus lie not only in targeted vilification, legal intimidation and the unwillingness of business owners to stand up for editorial independence. They also lie in Trump's ability to tap into platforms with minimal fact-checking, further undercutting the reach of high-quality journalism and making it more difficult for the public to discern truth from manipulation. Saskia Brechenmacher is a senior fellow in the Democracy, Conflict and Governance program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her research focuses on gender, civil society and democratic governance in the United States and globally. Margot Treadwell is a Gaither Junior Fellow in the Democracy, Conflict and Governance program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her interests lie in gender, labor rights and civil society. The post Trump Is Using a Familiar Playbook to Erode U.S. Press Freedoms appeared first on World Politics Review.
Yahoo
31-01-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
New Mexico lawmaker wants to strengthen press shield law
Rep. Sarah Silva (D-Las Cruces) outside her office in the New Mexico Legislature on Friday, Jan. 31, 2025. (Photo by Austin Fisher / Source NM) A freshman state lawmaker and leaders in both legislative chambers want to update and strengthen New Mexico's press shield law. Rep. Sarah Silva (D-Las Cruces) is carrying House Bill 153, which would update the definition of a journalist to include bloggers and nonprofit news outlets (like Source NM). It would also protect reporters' electronic communications, such as email, from state spying. The bill is modeled after the federal PRESS Act, which Congress failed to enact last year after then President-elect Donald Trump ordered congressional Republicans to block it. That would have codified regulations adopted by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2021 under former President Joe Biden. 'We see examples at the federal level of government chipping away at journalists' ability to do their jobs by pursuing the identities of unnamed sources and deterring whistleblowing,' Silva said in a statement on Friday. Trump tells U.S. Senate Republicans they 'must kill' journalism shield law Silva's Protect Reporters From Exploitive Spying Act is being co-sponsored by House Speaker Javier Martínez (D-Albuquerque) and Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth (D-Santa Fe), according to a news release from the Democratic majority in the House. The House of Representatives assigned the bill for hearings in the House Government, Elections and Indian Affairs Committee, and then the House Judiciary Committee. Those committee chairs on Friday had not yet scheduled it for a hearing. If enacted, the legislation would only apply to proceedings in the state government's legislative and executive branches because of a 1976 New Mexico Supreme Court ruling forbidding the Legislature and governor from enacting laws related to rules of evidence in court. The high court's press shield rule provides 'reasonably strong' protection against compelling journalists from disclosing confidential sources and information, according to a compendium written by Albuquerque lawyer Charles K. Purcell, an expert on the state's shield law and rule and a New Mexico Foundation for Open Government board member. However, Purcell wrote, that protection goes away whenever someone can convince a judge that the source or information is 'crucial' to their case and they have no other way of getting it. According to the news release, Silva and Purcell will ask the Supreme Court's Rules of Evidence Committee to consider changing the shield rule. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
