President’s Tweet Suggesting Boycott of CNN’s Parent Company, AT&T, A Disregard for Press Freedom

NEW YORK—In response to President Trump’s tweets today complaining about CNN’s coverage of him and his administration and suggesting a boycott of CNN’s parent company, AT&T, in order to encourage more favorable coverage, PEN America released the following statement:

“The president’s ill-informed proposal that consumers boycott a major U.S. corporation because of news coverage that he finds unfavorable makes plain the self-serving, insidious nature of his attacks on the media and his total disregard for the principle of press freedom.  The president is free to voice his opinion, but efforts to retaliate against news coverage he dislikes strike at the heart of our constitutional rights.  We sued the president to enjoin him from this very pattern of behavior.  Press freedom is too essential to our democracy to allow such attempts at retaliation to continue without answer.”

To learn more about our lawsuit against the president for his ongoing attempts to retaliate against members of the media and news outlets for coverage he dislikes, please visit https://pen.org/pen-america-v-trump/.  We recently filed a response to the government’s motion to dismiss the case.