SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The First Amendment's freedom of speech got a workout this week. Just in the last few days, a late-night host suspended after a federal regulators threat; a newspaper sued by the president for looking into how he made his money. The vice president encouraged podcast listeners to seek and report anyone who criticized the late Charlie Kirk; and late-night strictures now from the Pentagon. NPR's media correspondent David Folkenflik joins us. David, thanks for being with us.
DAVID FOLKENFLIK, BYLINE: Pleasure.
SIMON: And let's begin with the news from last night. A pledge being required of reporters credentialed to report at the Pentagon. What do we know?
FOLKENFLIK: So, Scott, this was a policy that was released late last night by the leadership of the Pentagon, which is run, of course, by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a former "Fox & Friends" weekend host. And it says that journalists to be credentialed at the Pentagon have to sign a pledge agreeing that they're not going to report on or to publicly report or disclose any information that hasn't been authorized by the Pentagon for release. And by the way, that includes nonclassified information, stuff that's not top secret. You know, that's called prior restraint, when the government tries to tell you ahead of time what you can and can't publish or broadcast.
A half-century ago, The New York Times, Washington Post and other outlets went to court - went to the Supreme Court and won over the Pentagon Papers, saying that the government can't exercise prior restraint. And here we are again. So I talked to NPR's editor-in-chief, Tommy Evans, and asked him about this. He said NPR is taking it very seriously. We'll be working with other news organizations to push back. We're big fans of the First Amendment and transparency, and we want the American public to understand what's being done in their name.
SIMON: Maybe we should remind ourselves, what do we mean in America when we say free speech?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, it's embedded in our Bill of Rights - the very First Amendment. Part of it, as you alluded to, is the freedom of speech. The government does not have right. The federal government cannot tell you what you can or can't say publicly, with some very small limitations, like defamation and other things like that. This is protection from the government not just of journalists but of any citizen, any person in the public sphere. And the idea is that it's not just that speech that is pleasing is protected. It's not just that speech that is tidy or kind. It's to protect dissent and to protect, you know, as the years evolved, reporting that people in power might not want to be public.
SIMON: President Trump came to office promising to protect free speech. What has that meant in practice though?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, the president and his allies have gone after what they call cancel culture, wokeism (ph). They've used the power of the government to go after language about diversity in corporate suites, for example, equity and inclusion. It's been seeking to unleash speech that has been seen as offensive or off-limits and using the power of government to do so. But let's be clear. That's the kind of speech the president likes. The administration, at his direction, is also going after major institutions where you find critics or people challenging the administration and its policies. So think of universities. Think of law firms. Think of corporations - and, yes, especially the media.
Just this week, Trump sued The New York Times as a private citizen for reporting that goes against his narrative that he's a self-made billionaire. The judge threw out the case yesterday with some pretty strong language. He said Trump was using his legal complaint as a PR megaphone. Though, he said he could - the president could refile it. And let's not forget after the parent companies of ABC and CBS each paid $16 million to settle lawsuits by Trump against them that legal scholars told me were pretty flimsy. They've since pulled their late-night comics - that's CBS' Stephen Colbert and ABC's Jimmy Kimmel - at least temporarily. Those are two of the most acerbic public critics of the president that the broader public gets to see on a regular basis.
SIMON: David, what about the argument from the president and many of his supporters that the mainstream media has brought this on themselves by being selective about its outrage and has excluded dissident viewpoints that question liberal norms, from JK Rowling to Dave Chappelle?
FOLKENFLIK: And I've been hearing that, too, from folks, from conservative friends, from people online getting into my direct messages. I'm reporting this week in South Dakota. I'm hearing it as I go out and talk to people. You know, look, I think that once Trump arrived on the scene, and you had, shortly after, #MeToo movement, and then you had the 2020 social justice movements - those affected a lot of newsrooms, as well as it affected a lot of different figures in corporations, in public life. And I think that's something the press has to reckon with. You know, people seeking to report broadly and reach broad audiences have to reach them and treat them respectfully in ways they recognize, even as they report things factually and truthfully. But that's a very different thing from arguing that the government needs to be the one to enforce the right balance of political speech, and we've seen that in a variety of ways.
SIMON: Where does that leave us on the idea of free speech right now in America?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, you've seen, for example, the president's chief broadcast regulator, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, be sort of his warrior against the free speech of media outlets that have aggrieved the president. And there's a chilling effect when federal government makes demands, as Brendan Carr does, or launches investigations, as he has done. That's the antithesis of the First Amendment. Maybe offending voices won't be found in late night. Maybe news outlets will pull their punches from hard-hitting reporting or commentary, as we've already seen from the billionaire-owned Washington Post and Los Angeles Times. How will we know what we don't hear?
The First Amendment only really means something if it is exercised and if it is defended. The First Amendment isn't meant only to cover people when the speech is kind or inoffensive or when news reporting is flattering or accepted by everybody or is perfectly accurate. It's meant to cover, as I mentioned before, kind of this boisterous, roiling, untidy and often impolitic discussion of public life and especially about the nation's most powerful and prominent public officials.
SIMON: NPR's David Folkenflik, thanks so much.
FOLKENFLIK: You bet.
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