Free Press In Crisis

Note: I had the good fortune of being asked to participate in "A Constitution Challenged," a September 18, 2025 Constitution Day panel at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. My role was to talk about current challenges to the free press. Below is a summary of my remarks. --Tony Palmeri 

In 1787 the Founders gave us a First Amendment that made it against the law for the Congress to abridge the freedom of the press. Yet just a decade later, in 1798, the Congress abridged the freedom of the press. The Sedition Act made it a crime for American citizens to "print, utter, or publish...any false, scandalous, and malicious writing" about the government.

A number of dissenters were prosecuted under the Sedition Act, but it did expire in 1800. Still, for much of American history the press practiced self-censorship. That was because the First Amendment was interpreted as only limiting what the Congress in Washington could do; states and local communities thus felt empowered to abridge the press as much as they wanted. Even after the Supreme Court ruled, in the 1925 Gitlow v. New York decision, that the First Amendment did apply to the states, political leaders' threats of libel and defamation lawsuits continued to muzzle the press significantly. 

That all changed in 1964 with the landmark case of New York Times v.Sullivan. Justice Brennan wrote that "we consider this case against the background of a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.” Further, "an unconditional right to say what one pleases about public affairs is what I consider to be the minimum guarantee of the First Amendment.” 

NYT v. Sullivan created a high bar for public officials to be able to prevail in defamation lawsuits against the press. The official would have to prove "Actual Malice," meaning that the accused press knew what they published was false, or acted with reckless disregard for the truth. The hard hitting, sometimes blistering journalism and punditry we came to know (and take for granted) from the 1960s until today was only possible because of NYT v. Sullivan. 

Justice William Brennan, widely recognized as one of the great free speech champions of the United States Supreme Court, wrote the majority opinion in NYT v. Sullivan

Today the free press is in crisis. The crisis did not start with the Trump Administration, but President Trump is challenging press freedoms in a way we have not seen in many years. I will briefly cover six areas of crisis: 

1. President Trump’s Defamation Lawsuits
2. Attacks on Press Independence
3. The New Federal Communications Commission
4. Dismantling of Support For National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting
5. Attacks on Public Access to Information
6. Attacks on the Student Press

 Trump Defamation Lawsuits

• In 2023 Trump sued CNN for $475 million, claiming that the network defamed him when they referred to his election results denialism as a “Big Lie” technique. A federal judge threw out the lawsuit.
• In July President Trump filed a $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal, claiming that the paper's story about the birthday card that Trump sent Jeffrey Epstein is false, malicious, defamatory fake news. Lawyers for the WSJ asked a judge to throw out the suit, arguing that "This meritless lawsuit threatens to chill the speech of those who dare to publish content that the President does not like." 
• President Trump filed a $20 Billion lawsuit against Paramount over the manner in which an interview with Kamala Harris was edited by “60 Minutes." Even though there was nothing at all unusual about the way the interview was edited, Paramount agreed to pay Trump $16 million to settle. Shari Redstone was the Chair of Paramount, and the rumor is she wanted to settle the suit so that the federal government would approve an $8 billion dollar merger between Paramount and Skydance. Paramount also announced that the Late Show With Stephen Colbert would be canceled at the end of this year. In July the Federal Communication Communication Commission approved the merger.
• Trump sued ABC News for defamation over comments made on-air by George Stephanopolous. Instead of saying that Mr. Trump had been found liable for the "sexual abuse and defamation" of E. Jean Carroll, Stephanopolous said Trump had been found liable for rape. ABC agreed to donate $15million for the Trump Library to make the defamation lawsuit go away. 
• Trump sued the Des Moines register for publishing an election poll that predicted Kamala Harris would win Iowa.
• Recently Trump sued the New York Times for $15 billion over their 2024 coverage of the presidential campaign. 

Attacks on Press Independence

• The administration banned the Associated Press from the White House press pool for not using Trump’s "Gulf of America" rebranding of the Gulf of Mexico. A federal judge ordered the White House to restore the newsroom’s access in April on the grounds that the ban violated the First Amendment. However, that decision was temporarily delayed by the D.C. Circuit with an appeal currently pending.
• Coverage of the White House. The White House Correspondents Association for 100 years managed the selection of reporters to cover the White House. In February the WHCA ceded control of that responsibility to the Trump Administration. That's why we are now treated to absurdities like a pro-Trump sycophantic "reporter" asking President Zelensky why he is not wearing a suit: 

The New Federal Communications Commission

• President Trump appointed Brendan Carr, the lead author of a chapter in Project 2025, to lead the Federal Communication Commission.
• Carr has  launched a number of investigations into media sources that president does not like, and Paramount as well as Verizon and T-Mobile ended DEI programs.

 Dismantling of Public Support For National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting

• These attacks include a $1.1 billion cut in public broadcasting funds to NPR and PBS stations in a recission bill. 
• Trump's Executive Order which accused the media outlets of failing to create “fair, accurate, or unbiased” reporting.
• The Corporation For Public Broadcasting will probably close in 2026. Ironically, the populations hit hardest by this loss will be rural areas that voted in huge numbers for Donald Trump. 

Attacks on Public Access to Information:

• More than 8,000 web pages across more than a dozen government agencies have been purged. That makes it impossible for journalists to do their jobs. This is like an Orwellian Ministry of Truth. 
• The purge is being carried out so incompetently that even images of the Enola Gay (World War II B-29 bomber) were censored, apparently because of the word "gay." 

 Attacks on Student Press:

• Rumeysa Ozturk is a Turkish national and graduate student at Tufts University in Massachusetts. After co-authoring this op-ed, she was detained by ICE. The ability to write an opinion piece without fear of arrest is at the core of what the First Amendment is about. 
• Chilling effects: The Heights, which is the Boston College student newspaper, said that international students are too afraid totalk to the paper for fear of having their visas revoked.
• In April, student media groups warned of unprecedented threats to the student press. 

We close with this depressing statement from Reporters Without Borders: "After a century of gradual expansion of press rights in the United States, the country is experiencing its first significant and prolonged decline in press freedom in modern history, and Donald Trump’s return to the presidency is greatly exacerbating the situation."

Finally, a piece of advice: be careful about celebrating the silencing of the press that you don't like. The next day it will be press that you DO like that will be censored. We must all work in solidarity to ensure freedom of the press remains free of government censorship and other forms of bullying.