The Justice Department’s secret seizure of phone records from The Associated Press and its monitoring of Fox News reporter James Rosen are nothing less than thuggish attempts to criminalize the practice of journalism — the only profession specifically protected by the US Constitution.
Free and open inquiry is also the cornerstone of our democracy, a legacy of the Enlightenment that found its clearest expression in the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”
By which the Founders specifically meant political speech.
They understood that, even with the checks and balances built into the Constitution, there was still a need for an unfettered press to keep an eye on “public servants” with access to both state treasure and power. And that an absolute guarantee of freedom of inquiry was vital.
“Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom; and no such thing as public liberty, without freedom of speech,” wrote “Cato” (British essayists Thomas Gordon and John Trenchard) in a 1720 essay that greatly influenced the Framers. “Whoever would overthrow the liberty of the nation, must begin by subduing the freedom of speech.”
In investigating the AP, Rosen and other Fox News personnel, Attorney General Eric Holder’s agency has invoked “national security” and the Espionage Act of 1917. Indeed, Justice has filed six cases under the World War I-era act — more than all other administrations combined.
First, note that the leaks they’ve opted to plumb are ones detrimental to the president’s media image as the scourge of al Qaeda and defender of the realm.
Second, there’s a big difference between actual spies and reporters doing their jobs. In the 1971 Pentagon Papers case (also an Espionage Act case, by the way), the Supreme Court took no position on the act itself, but ruled against the Nixon administration’s attempt to restrain The New York Times and The Washington Post from publishing the purloined Vietnam War documents.
Said Justice Hugo Black: “Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.”
Not that any of this seems to matter to this administration, which openly refers to its ideological opponents as “enemies.”
Following the tactics outlined by socialist radical Saul Alinsky, the father of “community organizing,” the Obama governing ethos is one of slander, intimidation and — as the burgeoning IRS scandal so vividly illustrates — occasional blunt force to keep its “enemies” demoralized and incapacitated in its pursuit of “fundamental transformation.”
Whether there are still enough self-respecting mainstream reporters and editors willing to fight back, though, is another question. Since Campaign ’08, most of the media has been in the tank for Obama, seeing in him the culmination of half a century of liberal social progress.
Like them, Obama is a product of elite schools and shares their values. In a world in which reporters and political operatives live and work in the same neighborhoods, vacation together and routinely intermarry, the president is viewed as “one of us.” Where once they reveled in their status as outsiders, today’s media elite are now drawn from the same social class as the people they cover.
With David Axelrod, a former Chicago Tribune journalist turned campaign guru, pulling their strings, the media has been loath to do or say anything against their hero, preferring to applaud the Hope, rather than investigate the Change.
It never seems to have occurred to them that they might become targets themselves.
There are signs that the worms are finally turning — “the Obama administration has moved beyond protecting government secrets to threatening fundamental freedoms of the press,” the Times editorialized yesterday. And of course the president has issued some pro forma boilerplate in defense of press freedom via his beleaguered press secretary, Jay Carney (himself a former Time magazine reporter).
Relying on the government’s good will, however, isn’t enough. In the Nixon years, journalists wore a place on the “enemies list” as a badge of honor. It’s time for reporters to reclaim that badge and start acting like the guardians of liberty they’re meant to be — if not for themselves, then for their country.