Over the last two months, when I and fellow professors who teach journalism and mass communications tell people what we do, we get a common response: “Wow, that must be a really tough job right now.”
It is. But it shouldn’t be. The Trump administration’s assault on the First Amendment is an untenable threat to the very core of American democracy. And for those of us who teach the fundamentals of free expression for a living, it’s personal.
The First Amendment is the great social equalizer. Yes, some people will always have a bigger platform than others (that’s a story for another day). But the First Amendment means that anyone can enter the great American marketplace of ideas without fear that state actors will punish them because they disagree with their message. That is true even when the speech is vile and hateful. It is true even when the speaker is an immigrant. It is especially true when the government is quick to claim the speech poses a “national security risk.”
The First Amendment also means that journalists can keep the government in check–regardless of which political party is in power–by reporting with full and unfettered editorial discretion, without fear that officials will levy the powers of the state against them in retaliation for unfavorable or unflattering coverage.
In an executive order from January, the Trump administration signaled that it cares about the First Amendment, calling it “essential to the success of our Republic” by “enshrin[ing] the right of the American people to speak freely in the public square without Government interference.” However, in a mere matter of months, the administration has flouted basic First Amendment principles repeatedly and with impunity. A thorough accounting of these varied violations is necessary.
The administration infringed the constitutional due process and First Amendment rights of students Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk to freely express their opinions on the Israel-Gaza conflict when it detained them on specious national security grounds. It violated the rights of the Associated Press by shutting it out of the White House press room for refusing to call the body of water along our southern coastline the “Gulf of America.” It has threatened the free press through frivolous lawsuits, such as one against the Des Moines Register, alleging editors and pollsters intentionally defrauded voters in the runup to the 2024 election. And, most recently, the President signed an executive order instructing the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to cease directing funds to National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service due to their alleged “biased and partisan news coverage.”
The administration has also shown brazen willingness to wage a multipronged war against the free press. One target: the First Amendment-protected editorial discretion of CBS News, which it has subjected to a toxic slurry of attacks. First came a lawsuit (still pending) brought last fall by then-candidate Trump, claiming that the editing of a 60 Minutes interview of Kamala Harris constituted election interference in violation of consumer protection laws and demanding $20 billion in damages. Second, President Trump is siccing Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr against the network; Carr is now weaponizing an arcane power of the agency and reopening a previously dismissed complaint against CBS in order to adjudicate an alleged “distortion” of news involving that same “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris. Lastly, both the lawsuit by Trump and the widely-criticized FCC investigation loom over the necessity of obtaining administration approval of a merger between CBS’s parent company Paramount and Skydance, a situation that has been widely reported as applying insidious pressure on Paramount to settle these cases in favor of the President, regardless of the underlying merits.
The administration has chilled free expression in ways that not only violate the First Amendment, but also violate numerous other constitutional and statutory rights and protections. By withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding from major universities unless they do more to fight antisemitism and “wokeism,” all without the due process required under Title VI and with utter disregard for the First Amendment, the administration is stifling free and robust debate on college campuses, including about one of the most important geopolitical crises of our time (though Harvard is fighting back). By denying certain law firms access to their longtime clients in the federal bureaucracy in the name of petty score settling, the administration is strangling the kind of zealous legal advocacy that the First Amendment fosters (though Perkins Coie and a few other firms are fighting back). And by switching off Voice of America, the administration is signaling to adversaries and allies alike that America’s commitment to fostering freedom of expression around the globe has flagged (though VOA journalists, aided by Yale’s Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic, are fighting back).
Highlighting the connection among attacks on otherwise distinct institutions is essential to fighting back. As Rebecca Hamilton wrote in “Just Security,” “If journalists, lawyers, and academics are going to be able to play the role that they need to perform as bulwarks of democracy and the rule of law, they and their employers must begin to think and act in collective terms.”
Free expression is the glue holding these institutions together. We cannot let attacks like those of the past 100 days be the solvent.
The legal challenges linked to above are heartening, but these battles over the First Amendment cannot take place in courtrooms alone. Indeed, Trump continues to fight the battle against CBS in his favorite theater of social media, where he posted that ”[CBS] should lose their license! Hopefully, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), as headed by its highly respected Chairman, Brendan Carr, will impose the maximum fines and punishment, which is substantial, for their unlawful and illegal behavior.” Paramount appears ready to settle rather than fight. That means the rest of us need to fight harder for the rights we care about–the rights that my colleagues and I care so much about that we’ve devoted our careers to improving public literacy about them.
Judge Learned Hand warned, “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it.” The administration’s censorial actions are only as powerful as we, the people, allow them to be.
Brett G. Johnson, PhD/JD, is associate professor at the University of Iowa School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
