Government shouldn't seek to direct or control press coverage

Government shouldn't seek to direct or control press coverage

There’s a disturbing tendency in the Obama White House to lecture journalists on how to do their jobs. But if journalists only report what government officials wish them to report, and only when those officials deem it the proper time, then where’s the accountability. Here’s President Obama, on Monday, following terrorist bombings in New York and New Jersey.“I would ask that the press try to refrain from getting out ahead of the investigation,” Obama said in a press conference. He praised law enforcement, but scolded the media for concluding (from bombs going off) that bombs had gone off.“It does not help if false reports or incomplete information is out there,” he said.The irony here is that even as Obama spoke, reports were being confirmed that Ahmad Khan Rahami, the man allegedly responsible for the bombs, was in police custody following a shootout. Obama made no mention of that. Were reporters supposed to “refrain from getting out ahead” of the president on this important development?Then there’s Secretary of State John Kerry, who sees global warming as a bigger threat than ISIS.He says journalists shouldn’t cover terrorism, because it only serves to inform people.

“If you decide one day you’re going to be a terrorist and you’re willing to kill yourself, you can go out and kill some people,” he said. “You can make some noise... perhaps the media would do us all a service if they didn’t cover it quite as much. People wouldn’t know what’s going on.”
Yes, that’s the point.
Of course the administration would love to have greater control of what newspapers print and broadcasters say. The administration’s narrative is that terrorism is, in fact, a battle of narratives. Actual bombings disrupt that portrayal of things.
Yet a free press is a fundamental component of our system of government.
“The only security of all is in a free press,” Thomas Jefferson wrote to his friend the Marquis de Lafayette. “The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure.”
He went on to tell John Jay, “Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it.”
That doesn’t mean Jefferson was always happy with the press; he excoriated the newspapers of the time - but never sought to limit them.
“Our printers raven on the agonies of their victims, as wolves do on the blood of the lamb,” he wrote to James Monroe.
Yet still, he said, “I am for freedom of the press, and against all violations of the Constitution to silence by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents.”
It’s not just the Obama administration, of course. Many levels of government would love to be their own watchdogs.
But that’s not how it works. The press must remain independent of the government it covers