How billionaires, corporations and secretive governments curtail press freedom

[Commentary] The issue of press freedom is far bigger than Donald Trump and Peter Thiel, The Post and Gawker, or left and right. Press freedom is fundamentally an issue of power — of enabling those who don’t have it to hold those who do accountable — and it transcends partisan politics. There is a long history of struggle between journalists and powerful figures in both parties, which is why the fight to defend the free press should unite Americans of all political stripes. Indeed, President Barack Obama's presidency has been defined in part by the White House’s troubling secrecy and lack of transparency. “On media rights generally, the Obama Administration hasn’t walked its talk,” The Post’s Margaret Sullivan recently wrote. “It has set new records for stonewalling or rejecting Freedom of Information requests. And it has used an obscure federal act to prosecute leakers.”

Meanwhile, amid 2014’s heated protests in Ferguson (MO), several reporters were arrested and assaulted by police for committing the apparent crime of journalism. An informed public is vital to our democracy. But we will never be truly informed unless we fight for the media’s ability to hold those with power accountable — from corporations to the government to billionaire presidential candidates — without fearing the repercussions. That’s the only way to achieve what then-Rep. John E. Moss (D-A), the primary author of the Freedom of Information Act a half-century ago, identified as the inherent goal of the right to a free press: protecting the public’s right to know. America cannot be great again without leaders who understand the importance of a free press and who are committed to ensuring that, as Madison put it, “Knowledge will forever govern ignorance.”