The Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based advocacy group, usually focuses on the fight for press freedoms overseas. In the past, the group has condemned the persecution of reporters and photographers in Turkey, Egypt, Iran and China, among other countries.
But this year is not like other years. Throughout the presidential campaign, Donald Trump relentlessly excoriated and mocked journalists, fostering a hostile environment in which his supporters often joined in taunting and threatening the press corps. So when the committee held its annual dinner in New York City on Tuesday night, it rightly shone a spotlight on the United States itself.
The blunt warnings from some of the country’s best journalists felt surreal given that the Founders enshrined a free press and free speech in the First Amendment and the United States has long served as the premier international advocate of those sacred principles.
“This year the threats to press freedom are quite close to home. It’s right here,” said David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker. Although CNN, among other organizations, has been justly criticized for giving Mr. Trump far too much leeway, its president Jeff Zucker promised that “we will hold the new administration’s feet to the fire and they should respect that, even if they don’t welcome it.”
The barnburner, though, was a speech by Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s chief international correspondent, who received the 2016 Burton Benjamin Memorial Award for extraordinary achievement in the cause of press freedoms.
“I never thought in a million years that I would be standing up here after all the times I’ve participated in this ceremony appealing, really, for the freedom and safety of American journalists at home,” she said.
Ms. Amanpour decried the rise of fake news in the American presidential campaign, a culture that increasingly rejects facts and a media that twisted itself in knots trying to balance coverage between the candidates. She expressed shock that so many voters turned their backs on fundamental American values when they ignored the “vulgarity of language, the sexual predatory behavior, the deep mysogyny, the bigoted and insulting views” of Mr. Trump.
While Ms. Amanpour expressed hope that Mr. Trump would eventually moderate his behavior toward the press, she spoke darkly of “the peril we face” and how easily other leaders – Sisi in Egypt, Erdogan in Turkey, Putin in Russia, the ayatollahs in Iran – have slid from branding journalists as sympathizers and subversives to putting them in jail.
She concluded with a full-throated call for the press to recommit to “robust, fact-based reporting without fear and without favor on the issues” because journalism and democracy are in “mortal peril.”
“Don’t stand for being called or labelled lying or crooked or failing,” she said, using some of Mr. Trump’s favorite epithets. “We have to stand up together because divided we will fall.”
The committee also honored several international journalists for the heroic work for which they endured death threats (Malini Subramaniam of India and Óscar Martínez of El Salvador); jail (Mahmoud Abou Zeid, also known as Shawkan, of Egypt); a gun attack and a court conviction now under appeal (Can Dündar of Turkey).
By comparison, American journalists have it much easier. But what happens here has profound implications for the rest of the world. If press freedoms are not defended with maximum resolve in the United States, it will be impossible to promote and defend such a fundamental principle anywhere.
No comments:
Post a Comment