Rieder: Unlike Trump, Pence has been a press champion

[Commentary] Donald Trump hardly has a record as a champion of the press. It's somewhat surprising that his choice of running mate, Gov Mike Pence (R-IN), over the years has been a stalwart champion of freedom of the press.

During his years in Congress, Pence was a leader in the persistent, but ultimately unsuccessful, effort to pass a shield law, which in many instances would protect journalists from being forced to identify confidential sources. In an op-ed in The Washington Times in 2008, Pence gave a ringing endorsement to the importance of an aggressive press in a free society, one that would have been right at home in a dispatch from the American Society of News Editors. But Pence stumbled mightily over the government/media relationship early in 2015 when his administration made plans to set up what essentially would have been a government-run news service. According to documents obtained by The Indianapolis Star, the news service was to feature articles by state press secretaries that would be published on a website and made available for use by news outlets around the state. Once the plan leaked, it was instantly derided as a ploy to disseminate government-sanctioned news that would be more at home in a totalitarian state than in a democracy.