March 2017

[Commentary] President Trump's attacks on the mainstream news media have not only energized them, but have prompted them to work together to plot a common strategy to preserve and expand their First Amendment rights and protections. National and local broadcasters should support this effort, providing money and speaking out.

[Commentary] In today’s economy, it is equally important that access to the backbone of twenty-first century infrastructure, the Internet, be similarly unfettered. That is why it is critical that we maintain the net neutrality protections and clear oversight authority that the Federal Communications Commission put in place in 2015 through the Open Internet Order. The Open Internet order is working well as it is and should remain undisturbed.

To prohibit ideological political appointees from unilaterally dismantling the order, we would welcome the partnership of our Republican colleagues to codify into statute the full protections of net neutrality, including the authority and ability of the FCC to adapt regulations to changing conditions. If President Trump and FCC Chairman Ajit Pai want to demonstrate that they indeed serve the American people rather than a few corporate friends, they should make clear immediately that they do not support any undoing of the protections of net neutrality. If not, they can expect a wall of resistance from Senate Democrats, who will continue fighting tooth and nail to protect fair and equal Internet access for all Americans.

[Sen Chuck Schumer is the Senate Minority Leader]

[Commentary] As the forces of reaction outpace movements predicated on the ideal of progress, and as traditional norms of political competition are tossed aside, it’s clear that the internet and social media have succeeded in doing what many feared and some hoped they would. They have disrupted and destroyed institutional constraints on what can be said, when and where it can be said and who can say it. Even though in one sense President Trump’s victory in 2016 fulfilled conventional expectations — because it prevented a third straight Democratic term in the White House — it also revealed that the internet and its offspring have overridden the traditional American political system of alternating left-right advantage. They are contributing — perhaps irreversibly — to the decay of traditional moral and ethical constraints in American politics.

The influence of the internet is the latest manifestation of the weakening of the two major American political parties over the past century, with the Civil Service undermining patronage, the rise of mass media altering communication, campaign finance law empowering donors independent of the parties, and the ascendance of direct primaries gutting the power of party bosses to pick nominees. Two developments in the 2016 campaign provided strong evidence of the vulnerability of democracies in the age of the internet: the alleged effort of the Russian government to secretly intervene on behalf of Trump, and the discovery by internet profiteers of how to monetize the distribution of fake news stories, especially stories damaging to Hillary Clinton.

[Tom Edsall teaches political journalism at Columbia University]

The National Coalition Against Censorship and the American Society of News Editors (ASNE), along with more than 80 other organizations committed to the First Amendment right of freedom of speech and the press, are condemning efforts by the Trump administration to demonize the media and undermine its ability to inform the public about official actions and policies.

In a joint statement released on March 2, the groups stress that the administration’s attacks on the press pose a threat to American democracy. The statement cites numerous attempts by the administration to penalize and intimidate the press for coverage the President dislikes, including refusing to answer questions from certain reporters, falsely charging the media with cover-ups and manipulation of news, and denying certain media outlets access to press briefings. Official designation of the media as “the opposition party” escalated when the President described the New York Times, CBS, CNN, ABC, and NBC News as “the enemy of the American people!” The statement emphasizes that an independent and free press is the Constitution’s safeguard against tyranny. Its job is not to please the President but to report accurately on the actions of public officials so the public has the information to hold power accountable. Efforts to undermine the legitimacy or independence of the press, the statement reads, “betray the country’s most cherished values and undercut one of its most significant strengths.”