Enid (Okla.) News & Eagle on attacks on press freedoms (March 15):

As Sunshine Week 2023 continues, it’s important for citizens to know that there are strong, government-led initiatives to severely limit free speech and the ability of the press to do its job. And, one of the leading cheerleaders of this movement is Florida Gov. Ron Desantis, who is also a 2024 Republican presidential hopeful.

Desantis is pursuing a home-state agenda that could make it harder for people to learn what public officials are doing or to speak out against them. In an unprecedented move, Desantis has claimed an executive right to keep key government records secret. He’s also seeking to weaken a nearly 60-year-old national legal precedent protecting journalists and others who publish critical comments about public figures.

According to an Associated Press story, Florida’s Republican-led Legislature appears eager to carry out his vision. As their annual session began last week, lawmakers filed dozens of bills that would add to the state’s lengthy list of open-government exceptions.

The precedent Desantis (and others) seeks to overturn is known as New York Times v. Sullivan. In 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that our First Amendment right to freedom of speech limited the ability of public officials to sue for defamation. It set a lasting precedent that provides important protections for journalists. In that case, the court ruled that to win a libel suit, a public official would have to prove “actual malice,” meaning that there was a reckless disregard for the truth.

New York Times v. Sullivan provides protections that shield journalists in asking hard questions of public officials. Seeking to overturn or roll back this landmark decision has gone both ways in the past with both political parties. But at the current time, the GOP has been on the receiving end of a lot of criticism, and in many cases, GOP legislatures are looking for ways to thwart those criticisms.

If Desantis and others are successful in their efforts to roll back these protections, it will have a chilling effect on transparency in government.

The state of journalism is changing and evolving, mainly due to the influence of social media and others who are not “trained” as journalists. However, legitimate journalists are trained emphasize integrity, and even in our hyper-partisan culture at the moment, journalists have a vested interest in getting the story right. They are not abusing the Sullivan privilege.

Many politicians today are openly hostile to the press, and it’s become sport for some of them to portray the press as an “enemy.” While we are all aware of it now, this is nothing new, so the protections of Sullivan are more important than ever.

Citizens must be vigilant in holding government official accountable, no matter where they fall on the partisan spectrum. Supporting independent journalism and local news organizations helps serve democracy. That’s why attacks on these freedoms must be stopped. Because these press freedoms are also citizen freedoms that deserve protection.