Journalist Don Lemon talks to the media after a hearing at the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building in Los Angeles on Jan. 30.Damian Dovarganes/The Associated Press
Joe Davidson is a former Washington Post columnist, a former national and foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, and a co-founder of the National Association of Black Journalists.
The arrests of reporters Don Lemon and Georgia Fort on remarkably flimsy grounds last week show that U.S. President Donald Trump is intensifying his attack on American democracy. It’s another mark of a wannabe authoritarian, for a President who imagines himself a royal – though his garish gilded Oval Office is real.
Mr. Lemon, a former CNN anchor who now hosts his own online show, and Ms. Fort, an independent Minnesota journalist, were arrested by federal agents almost two weeks after they covered an anti-ICE demonstration inside a Minneapolis church, where the pastor is an ICE official. Each reporter could face up to 10 years in prison on charges of conspiracy to deprive congregants of their civil right to exercise their freedom of religion, even though two federal judges had rejected charges against them before the White House convinced a grand jury to indict. The charges may as well have been for committing journalism.
Former CNN anchor Don Lemon pleads not guilty after arrest during Minnesota church protest
The most ludicrous allegations frame Mr. Lemon’s interview with the pastor as intimidation because the reporter was “peppering him with questions,” which is what inquisitive reporters do. Mr. Lemon has also been charged with aiding the protesters by maintaining their “operational secrecy,” though Washington officials regularly do the same thing by placing information under embargo until a newsmaker wants it public. Before he was indicted, Mr. Lemon succinctly and accurately defended himself and Ms. Fort during a livestream from the church: “I’m not here as an activist. I’m here as a journalist.” Rather trying to “oppress and intimidate” by standing “in proximity to the pastor,” as the government contends, they just wanted the pastor’s comments.
While Mr. Lemon and Ms. Fort are no longer in custody, it is press freedom that now faces arrest. Following a long history of bashing journalism through words, litigation and financial pressure, the President has become even more aggressive. Never mind that this is an industry protected by the U.S. Bill of Rights. These arrests, plus the FBI execution of a search warrant at the home of a Washington Post reporter who was not the investigation’s target, are just the latest evidence of Mr. Trump’s disdain for the fourth estate, the truth and American democracy.
Mr. Trump’s many rants about “fake news” and his repeated insults to reporters are juvenile harassment, reflecting his severe narcissism and delusions of grandeur. His claims that journalists are the “enemy of the people” have conditioned his supporters to accept acts against the press. And as Mr. Trump floods news organizations with lawsuits, public broadcasting has been federally defunded, the Pentagon has restricted its press corps and the Federal Communications Commission has announced harassing investigations into national news networks. But all that and more pales compared to arresting reporters. As more than four dozen organizations rightly declared in a statement led by the National Association of Black Journalists: “Journalism is NOT a crime.”
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What’s more, these attacks come at a time when journalism in the U.S. is already struggling. As economic forces slash local newsrooms and shutter organizations, more stable national outlets have been hit by U.S. government actions. The ABC and CBS television networks paid US$15-million and US$16-million, respectively, to settle Mr. Trump’s lawsuits, while several other cases are pending. Three days after CBS Late Show host Stephen Colbert called his network’s settlement “a big fat bribe,” his show was cancelled. Mr. Trump has even sued the Pulitzer Prize board after it would not rescind awards to The New York Times and The Washington Post for stories he did not like.
Yet, some media titans have acquiesced to Mr. Trump’s bullying, a revolting voluntary surrender to please this fickle king. While The Post has been a presidential target, its owner and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has curried favour with Mr. Trump by prominently supporting his second inauguration festivities; Amazon also bought the rights to Melania Trump’s self-serving documentary for US$40-million. I saw this fecklessness up close: When Mr. Bezos personally killed a Post editorial endorsing Kamala Harris for president, he unleashed a torrent of cancelled subscriptions and reputation-damaging staff defections. I quit the Post in protest last summer after the top editor killed a column he considered “too opinionated” in its criticism of Mr. Trump, though I had been writing in the same vein for 17 years. And now, mass layoffs are expected, gutting what was once one of the world’s best newsrooms.
The media must hold the President accountable, and Americans must reject Mr. Trump’s authoritarian efforts to prevent journalists from doing so. After all, an assault on journalism is a blow against democracy itself.