First Amendment

Don’t Like What the Media Say?

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Article in Washington Post by Scott Hover, et al, 5/2/25

Headline:  “Public media ready to fight ‘unlawful’ Trump order defunding PBS, NPR”

Subhead:  “Legal scholars say the executive order may exceed presidential authority and violate First Amendment, while local stations fear impact on communities.”

“President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to end federal funding for NPR and PBS — because of news coverage he called “biased and partisan” — triggered a fierce backlash from public broadcasters that appears poised to expand the White House’s larger legal battleground with the media industry.

“Issued Thursday night, the order instructs the congressionally chartered Corporation for Public Broadcasting to cut off direct funding to the venerable public media giants — producers of long-running news shows such as “All Things Considered” and “PBS NewsHour” — as well as any grants to local stations that might underwrite the national broadcasters’ programming. . .”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2025/05/02/trump-npr-pbs-executive-order-funding-cut/

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Article in The Nation by John Nichols, 5/2/25

Headline: “Trump’s Assault on PBS and NPR Chooses Oligarchy Over Press Freedom and Democracy”

“As the supporters of speaking truth to power celebrate World Press Freedom Day, Trump seeks to defund public media in the United States. . .”

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-npr-pbs-threat/

NPR – Warm, Fuzzy Treatment?

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Article in Fair by Julie Hollar, 5/2/25

Headline: “Hey NPR, Free Speech Isn’t Just a Vibe”

Green Card–holding students are being abducted from the streets by agents of the state for attending protests and writing op-eds. News outlets are being investigated by the FCC for reporting that displeases the president. Federal web pages are being scrubbed of a lengthy list of words, including ‘race,’ ‘transgender,’ ‘women’ and ‘climate.’

“NPR responded to this shocking government attack on free speech with a Morning Edition series on ‘The State of the First Amendment,’ whose introductory episode’s headline (4/7/25) declared freedom of speech to be ‘shifting under the Trump administration’; it promised that the show would be ‘exploring how.’

“The wishy-washy language wasn’t a promising start, and the segment only went downhill from there, taking an ‘on the one hand/on the other hand’ framing to an assault on core democratic rights. . .”

https://fair.org/home/hey-npr-free-speech-isnt-just-a-vibe/

First Amendment and Media?

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Sarah Grecy Gotfredsen, 4/10/25

Headline:  “Entry: Denied”

Subhead:  “The “intolerable risk to press freedom” posed by device searches at the border.”

“. . .In 2019, The Intercept documented how journalists covering the so-called migrant caravan faced ‘coordinated harassment’ from US and Mexican authorities. Through a series of interviews, the journalist Ryan Devereaux tells how members of the press were forced to turn over their notes, cameras, and phones while border officers interrogated them for information about activists working with members of the caravan. . .”

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/entry-denied-us-border-customs-device-unlock-search-journalists-detain.php

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Article in Fair by Janine Jackson, 4/10/25

Headline:  ” ‘This Is an All-Out War on the First Amendment’ “

Subhead:  “CounterSpin interview with Jessica González on Trump’s FCC”

“Janine Jackson:  ‘There are reasons that the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, is an opaque entity for many people. The fact that there is a federal agency setting the terms for media companies’ operations conflicts with many Americans’ understanding of the press corps as a group of brave, independent individuals looking to tell the truth, and let the chips fall where they may.’

“There are, in fact, many community-supported, differently structured news outlets doing just that. . .”

https://fair.org/home/this-is-an-all-out-war-on-the-first-amendment/