FREEDOM OF THE PRESS
County Executive George Latimer On World Press Freedom Day, May 3:
“One of the most important pillars of democracy is a free and open press. The job of a journalist is to hold leaders – on all levels of government – accountable while also telling the stories of the people, places and events that make up who we are as a society. To put it more simply, without a free and open press we would live in a vacuum and in a world where decisions were made without fear of consequence – and that is not democracy. On this 26th annual World Press Freedom Day, join me in commending those who do this work and calling for the freedom to report both here locally and around the world.”
Retired Adm. William McRaven:
In Feb. 2017, Retired Adm. William McRaven, who led the Joint Special Operations Command (the raid that took down bin Laden) said: “The president said the news media is the enemy of the American people. This sentiment may be the greatest threat to democracy in my lifetime.”
Christiane Amanpour:
In Nov. 2016 (post-election), Christiane Amanpour received the Burton Benjamin Memorial Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists, awarded at the International Press Freedom Awards, for “extraordinary and sustained achievement in the cause of press freedom.”
Some excerpts from her speech:
“I never thought in a million years that I’d be standing up here, after all the times I’ve participated in this ceremony, appealing, really, for the freedom and safety of American journalists at home.”
“I was chilled when [Trump’s] first tweet after the election was about professional protesters incited by the media.” [Because as we all know] “First the media is accused of inciting, then sympathizing, then associating. And then suddenly they find themselves accused of being full-fledged terrorists and subversives. And then they end up in handcuffs, in cages, in kangaroo courts, in prisons, and then who knows what.”
“[It’s time to] recommit to robust, fact-based reporting, without fear or without favor, on the issues. Don’t stand for being labeled or called ‘lying,’ or ‘crooked,’ or ‘failing.'”
“Much of the media was tying itself in knots trying to differentiate between balance, between objectivity, neutrality, and crucially, the truth. We cannot continue the old paradigm. We cannot, for instance, keep saying, like it was over global warming. When 99% of the science, the empirical facts, the evidence, is given equal play with the tiny minority of deniers.”
“I learned a long, long time ago…never to equate victim and aggressor. Never to create a false moral or factual equivalence…So I believe in being truthful, not neutral. And I believe we must stop banalizing the truth. We have to be prepared to fight especially hard right now for the truth.”
“[Donald Trump] did a very savvy end run around us and used it to go straight to the people. Combined with the most incredible development ever, which is the tsunami of fake news, aka lies.”
“I feel that we face an existential crisis, a threat to the very relevance and usefulness of our profession. Now, more than ever, we need to recommit to real reporting across a real nation, a real world in which journalism and democracy are in mortal peril. Including by foreign powers like Russia who pay to churn out and place these false news articles, these lies, in many of our press. They hack into democratic systems.”
“I was shocked because very few ever imagined that so many Americans conducting their sacred duty in the secret ballot box, using their ballots, would be angry enough to ignore the wholesale denigration of these values. The vulgarity of language, the sexual predatory behavior, the deep misogyny, the bigoted and insulting views.”
“WE MUST FIGHT AGAINST THE NORMALIZATION OF WHAT IS UNACCEPTABLE.”