Peter Sterne

[Commentary]  At the beginning of 2017, the US Press Freedom Tracker started cataloguing every violation of press freedom that took place on American soil, be it through violence, arrest, denial of access, or other threats. This is a selection of those incidents from 2017.

Donald Trump attorney general pick Sen Jeff Sessions (R-AL) dodged a question during his Senate confirmation hearings about whether he would subpoena or prosecute journalists for doing their jobs. Sen Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) asked Sen Sessions whether he would abide by current Justice Department regulations that make it difficult to subpoena or prosecute reporters, and whether he would pledge not to "put reporters in jail for doing their job." Sen Sessions offered a non-committal answer. "Senator Klobuchar, I am not sure," he testified. "I have not studied that, those regulations. I would note that when I was the United States Attorney, we knew, everybody knew, that you could not subpoena a witness or push them to be interviewed if they're a member of the media, without approval at high levels of the Department of Justice. That was in the 1980s. So I do believe the Department of Justice does have sensitivity to this issue."

Justice Department guidelines have long required federal prosecutors to receive approval for subpoenaing or prosecuting members of the media. It was these guidelines that prevented an assistant US attorney from indicting a Texas reporter in 1984. The key question is whether Sen Sessions, as the head of the Justice Department, would approve a federal prosecutor's subpoena or prosecution of a journalist.

On Dec 6, President-elect Donald Trump met with conservative commentator Laura Ingraham at Trump Tower. Ingraham — a talk radio host, Fox News contributor and the founder of conservative lifestyle site Lifezette — is believed to be the leading candidate to be Trump’s press secretary. Trump places a premium on loyalty, and Ingraham has supported the president-elect from the moment that he announced his candidacy a year and a half ago. A long-time supporter of hard-line immigration policies, she was a natural surrogate for the Trump campaign.

If Ingraham would be more interested in policy than previous White House press secretaries, she would also be less interested in the press. She believes that most mainstream news organizations are part of a bipartisan liberal establishment that is institutionally biased against Trump and right-wing populist movements. Throughout the campaign, she relentlessly criticized the “establishment media” and “Republican establishment” for its opposition to Trump.