Sunday rumination: Federal probes of leaks threaten our Constitutional rights

According to The Washington Post, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Friday the government was stepping up its efforts to crack down on unauthorized sources of sensitive information.

Presumably the announcement that the Justice Department has more than tripled the number of leak investigations compared to the number under the Obama administration was made to appease President Donald Trump who has attacked the attorney general for not doing more to clamp down on leaks and, according to the report, to scare government officials away from talking about sensitive matters.

As the Post article points out, Trump "has complained vociferously" about unauthorized disclosures of information, especially when the leaks result in stories that are unflattering to the administration. (And there have been a lot of those since he took office as we all know.)

The most disturbing part of the report in my estimation is when Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein refused to rule out the possibility that journalists would be prosecuted saying, "I'm not going to comment on any hypotheticals."

The Post article goes on to state that it has long been Justice Department practice in leak probes to try to avoid investigating journalists directly to find their sources.

It's hard to imagine that in the Trump era, where the commander in chief has branded legitimate news outlets like CNN and The  New York Times as "Fake News," an appellation which is as unfair as it is inaccurate, that previous policies such as those which were in place when then Attorney General Eric Holder Jr said that as long as he was  heading the Justice Department no reporter would be jailed for doing his or her job, will remain unaltered.

Admittedly, and to be fair, attacks on the fourth estate have never been exclusive to any partisan agenda. As the Post also pointed out in their report, prosecutors in the Obama era brought nine leak cases, exceeding the total of all previous administrations combined, and in the process called a reporter a criminal "conspirator." and surreptitiously went after a journalists' phone records in an attempt to identify the reporters' sources.

When the leader of the free world embraces the phrase "Enemy of the People" to describe the American news media, there are real negative consequences and he makes it okay for the public to view journalists with more distrust than they already do and recklessly puts journalists doing important work in danger.

Don't believe me? Think this is mere hyperbole on my part? Well considered what happened to  Guardian political reporter Ben Jacobs earlier this year.

Ben Jacobs, a Guardian political reporter, was asking Greg Gianforte, a tech millionaire endorsed by Donald Trump, about the Republican healthcare plan when the candidate allegedly “body-slammed” the reporter. In other instances, Trump supporters have been photographed at rallies wearing t-shirts emblazoned with such dictatorial rhetoric like "The best journalist is a dead journalist."

Americans who support the First Amendment and its guaranteed freedom of the press and who are also supportive of journalists' role in a democracy should shudder in fear when Sessions states that the government is reviewing the entire process of how media leak investigations are conducted, adding that they don't know yet what changes are coming down the pike, because they are taking a "fresh look."

The cornerstone of a free and democratic society is a free press. In America we don't jail members of the press for doing their jobs and part of that job entails speaking to sources and not compelling reporters to reveal their sources. Doing so would undermine a process that has been in place for years and which works to the benefit of society, not the converse, which the Trump administration would have us believe.

Without insiders providing information, journalists would be hampered in conducting probes and investigating government, an essential part of the checks and balances in our democratic process. Can you imagine Woodward and Bernstein being able to break a huge story like Watergate in the Vietnam era without the protections politicians have been trying to erode ever since?

Of course, Trump has shown himself to be either ignorant of these fundamental Constitutional processes freedoms and guarantees, or worse yet, he flaunts them openly in an attempt to conduct government in a fashion that dangerously borders authoritarian practices.

 So when Rosenstein, Sessions and Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats, among others in the White House elite announce they will be looking at reviewing policy in regards to leaks, it makes me very nervous and concerned. You should be as well. 
    

First Amendment freedoms et. al

Hello neglected journalism blog.
It was always my intention to update this blog with important issues, links and stories regarding our industry, but somehow I have neglected it, but I hope to rectify this moving forward into 2017.

Things are progressing at a good pace at The Willits News. Today I put the pages together, working with our designer in Chico for the first time, without much supervision from our managing editor who as of tomorrow will be on Christmas break until the end of the year.

After covering my first meeting of the Little Lake Fire Department, I trekked my way to the Brooktrails Township board meeting, which was no small feat considering Mendocino County is under a flash flood warning until Friday. We are expected to get anywhere from 3-12 inches of rain in the next few days, so I was extra careful driving down those windy roads leading back into town this evening.

Dec. 15 (coming up later this week) marks an important anniversary for democracy and for our industry. It is the anniversary of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which among other freedoms grants us the freedom of the press. I plan to write my first editorial for Friday's newspaper on this topic, but as a bit of preview and research, I found this article by the Newseum Institute to be very enlightening and important to all journalists and journalism students alike:

The State of the First Amendment survey, conducted by the Newseum Institute’s First Amendment Center, tests Americans’ knowledge of their core freedoms and samples their opinions on First Amendment issues of the day.
The results of this year’s survey show most Americans favor free speech, even over speech that offends, and support religious liberty, even in the face of terrorism. However, 39 percent of Americans could not name a single First Amendment freedom: religion, speech, press, assembly or petition.
The annual survey, which began in 1997 and this year was conducted in late May, showed that 86 percent of those responding in the national survey favored “protecting speech,” while just 10 percent favored limits aimed at “protecting people from hearing things that offend them.”
There also was strong support for free expression on college campuses: 57 percent said college students should be able to speak freely. The results dropped to 35 percent for students in high school.
Also, a follow-up survey done after the June 12 mass shooting in Orlando showed support for First Amendment protection for all religious faiths, regardless of how extreme or fringe the survey respondents might consider the beliefs of those faiths, actually increased, despite anti-Muslim rhetoric and reports of an ISIS connection that followed the worst mass shooting in U.S. history.

Here is a link to the full report if any of you would like to read it.

JACC Musings and the freedom of the press

I have decided I will continue to keep this blog more updated, despite my being busy with grad school.

I just got back from the Journalism Association of Community College's state convention held in Sacramento, CA this weekend. I had participated in this convention as a student in the past, even won a number of awards, and it was very interesting to do so as an editorial assistant for the journalism department at Mt. SAC where I currently work. There is a special feeling of having students go to workshops and learn about media law, public relations, editorial writing, social media and journalism and many other related topics. There is also something so awesome about getting there the first day and looking at the tables full of all the student produced publications in the entire state and later sitting down for dinner and watching an overhead slide presentation with the names of all these young people in journalism who are the future of our industry, most of whom are experienced and leaders in their respective campus publications.

Unfortunately our school did not receive awards this time around, on account of inexperience in our staff, high turnover of editors and a transition period with a temporary adviser who has nevertheless held the program pretty much together in the absence of our regular adviser. Speaking of leaves, I have been very troubled following the story of PCC's journalism adviser Warren Swil, who was placed on leave by Pasadena City College earlier this month. Most of us in the industry are concerned that this was a retaliation on the part of that campus' administration, even though the administration denies that.

It is troubling to even consider that our freedom of the press could be restricted by school administrators. I will continue to follow this case closely because I am intrigued by it and its possible repercussions. The latest report details that Swil is being helped by the Student Press Law Center, a representative of that organization also spoke at this weekend's convention.

A short and sweet one. Sorry about my long gap between blog posts.

Freedom of speech, it's such an important concept. Today my adviser at work was speaking about this specific news item, the Mesa Press publishing an article on a somewhat controversial topic, or is it really that controversial? Is the mainstream media making too much of what the student editors saw as an informative piece?
Personally, I thought it must have been a slow news day in order for the TV station to even bother reporting on this issue. At Mt. SAC for example, students have written about sex before, in different contexts, so I really see it as a non issue. You be the judge.