The Society of Professional Journalists joins a coalition of journalists, journalism organizations and free expression groups in a petition to the White House Correspondents’ Association, its officers, board of directors and members. The coalition urges the association to use the platform of its annual dinner to defend press freedom amid ongoing threats to the First Amendment and to reaffirm the essential role of a free and independent press in American democracy. It calls on the association to send a forthright message to President Donald J. Trump condemning his attacks on the First Amendment.
“The collective weight of the administration’s actions — retaliatory access bans, coercive regulatory investigations, frivolous lawsuits against the press, defunding of public broadcasting, dismantling of international broadcasting, physical restrictions on journalists, personal verbal attacks on reporters, assaults on the media in official White House press releases and social media posts, the arrest of journalists, and the pardoning of those who committed violence against the press — represent the most systematic and comprehensive assault on freedom of the press by a sitting American president,” the letter warns.
The coalition also calls on the association to make clear that press freedom transcends politics, urging it to “reaffirm, without equivocation, that freedom of the press is not a partisan issue.”
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