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press act
First Amendment Advocates Demand Senate Pass PRESS Act Before Trump Takes Office
"Lawmakers and President Biden must act before it's too late," said Trevor Timm of Freedom of the Press Foundation.
Nov 08, 2024
Press freedom advocates on Friday called on the Senate to urgently pass a bipartisan bill aimed at protecting reporters from government overreach and spying before what one group called "an anti-press extremist obsessed with punishing journalists and news outlets who criticize him" takes office as the next president of the United States.
National civil liberties group Defending Rights & Dissent said Republican President-elect Donald Trump's hostility toward the press as well as the plans outlined in the right-wing agenda Project 2025 make it imperative for the Democratic-led Senate to pass the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying (PRESS) Act.
The bill would shield reporters from surveillance aimed at finding out their sources.
"With many purportedly concerned about how Trump may impact our free press, it is unthinkable to allow a bill with as much bipartisan support as the PRESS Act to wither away and die," said Chip Gibbons, policy director for the group.
Project 2025, which was co-authored by at least 140 people who worked in the first Trump administration, calls to rescind the Department of Justice's current guidelines limiting when a journalist's communications records can be obtained by the federal government or when they can be compelled to testify.
"Trump has spent the last year on the campaign trail calling for more leak investigations, imprisoning journalists, and censoring news outlets he doesn't like."
"While administrations from both parties have made it the norm to use the Espionage Act to imprison whistleblowers, thus opening the door for surveillance of journalists," said Gibbons, "Project 2025 proposes undoing one of the only guardrails limiting this assault on democracy."
Trump has frequently expressed anger over journalists' coverage of him, and days before the election, he said he wouldn't "mind" if reporters at his rally were killed.
"Trump has spent the last year on the campaign trail calling for more leak investigations, imprisoning journalists, and censoring news outlets he doesn't like," said Trevor Timm, executive director of Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF). "Lawmakers and President [Joe] Biden must act before it's too late."
On Friday, FPF director of advocacy Seth Stern wrote that investigative journalist Catherine Herridge would be protected from government surveillance if the PRESS Act, which was unanimously passed by the House earlier this year, were signed into law.
The federal appellate court for the D.C. Circuit is expected to hold a secret hearing on November 18 about whether Herridge can be fined $800 per day for refusing to comply with a judicial order to disclose her sources for a story about a university president's alleged ties to the Chinese military.
"If the court rules against Herridge, every potential government whistleblower in the nation's capital will think twice before talking to journalists in confidence. That means that in the second Trump administration, we'll all know less about government waste, corruption, and malfeasance," wrote Stern. "Congress could moot all of this by passing the PRESS Act, the federal shield bill that would protect journalist-source confidentiality."
Gibbons called on Senate leaders to "act now and pass this legislation before Trump can enact Project 2025’s plans to turn counter intelligence surveillance against U.S. journalists."
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US Bill to Protect Reporters From Exploitative State Spying Heads to House Floor
"Journalists must be able to freely report on government actions without fear the government will compel them to reveal their sources," said one campaigner.
Jul 19, 2023
Privacy and First Amendment advocates on Wednesday urged the U.S. House to pass legislation that would protect the United States' bedrock freedoms and a core tenet of journalism: the right of reporters to guard the identities of their sources.
The House Judiciary Committee advanced the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying (PRESS) Act with bipartisan support, despite claims in recent months by Republican lawmakers such as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) that the legislation would "immunize journalists and leakers alike from scrutiny and consequences for their actions."
The bill has been recognized by press freedom advocates as the most important piece of legislation in modern times regarding journalists' rights, as it would codify state protections at the federal level.
Forty-nine states already protect reporters from being compelled to reveal their confidential sources and federal abuse of subpoena power, and the PRESS Act would ensure all journalists have those protections regardless of where in the country they live and work.
"Journalists must be able to freely report on government actions without fear the government will compel them to reveal their sources. We commend the House Judiciary Committee for its bipartisan support of the PRESS Act," said Daniel Schuman, policy director at Demand Progress. "The Senate must act now to advance this important legislation."
The House previously advanced the bill with a voice vote last September, garnering support from all the Republicans in the chamber. Schuman pointed out late last year, as Cotton blocked the passage of the bill in the Senate, that the lower chamber included a number of exceptions in the law to satisfy the House GOP.
The bill includes exceptions for cases pertaining to information necessary to identify people accused of terrorist acts or involving the risk of imminent bodily harm or death, crimes unrelated to journalism, slander, libel, and defamation.
"The PRESS Act creates critical protections for the fearless journalists who act as government watchdogs and keep all of us informed," said Jenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel at the ACLU, which has long advocated for the bill. "While the majority of states already have shield laws in place that protect journalists from compelled disclosure of their sources, the PRESS Act provides uniform protections to journalists all across the country. We thank the House Judiciary Committee for protecting our constitutional right to a free press and urge the full House to swiftly pass this bipartisan legislation."
Although the U.S. Department of Justice adopted a policy in 2021 restricting subpoenas and seizures of journalists' technological devices and data, Gabriela Schneider noted at First Branch Forecast, Demand Progress Education Fund's newsletter, that the measure "could just as easily be suspended, ignored, or secretly altered."
"Importantly," Schneider wrote, "the PRESS Act would codify into law this prohibition, making it real and permanent."
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