‘WRITES’ VIOLATIONS
Group sues Prez, claiming hits on media illegal under First Amendment
A prestigious group of American writers hopes to show President Trump that the pen is mightier than the tweet.
The nonprofit — known as PEN America — filed a lawsuit Tuesday in Manhattan Federal Court challenging Trump for his repeated threats against the media.
The 26-page lawsuit alleges that Trump violated the First Amendment by trying to intimidate the parent companies of The Washington Post and CNN, among other groups, with his “threats and retaliatory actions at specific outlets whose content and viewpoints he views as hostile.”
The lawsuit offered four examples of Trump's alleged media menacing: The Department of Justice's efforts to disrupt a merger between AT&T and Time Warner, the parent company of CNN; the President's threat to raise postal rates to harm Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, owner of The Washington Post; his threats to revoke television broadcast licenses based on network coverage of the White House; and ordering the removal of certain reporters or threatening to ban journalists whose coverage rankles the President.
“President Trump has thus intentionally hung a sword of Damocles over the heads of countless writers, journalists and media entities,” the lawsuit alleged. “His actions seek to accomplish indirectly that the president cannot do directly: impede professional and investigative journalism, and silence criticism.”
While Trump's right to criticize the media is protected by the First Amendment, his threats of retaliation are not, the group added.
“When President Trump crosses the line and threatens to use his authority to punish
the media, or actually does so, it is vital for the courts to step in and affirm that such threats and reprisals are unconstitutional,” read a release from the group headed by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jennifer Egan.
“As an organization of writers, we at PEN America are deeply concerned to see the antagonism toward the press that we’ve long associated with authoritarian rulers around the world manifest here at home.”
A Department of Justice spokesperson declined to comment on the lawsuit.
PEN America was founded in 1922 and says it “stands at the intersection of literature and human rights.” Its members past and present include such literary giants as Chinua Achebe, Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Philip Roth and Salman Rushdie, among many others.
Trump’s favorite venue for media-bashing remains Twitter, where his 140-character outbursts routinely describe America’s news gatherers as “enemy of the people” or attack journalists like CNN’s Don Lemon or MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.
“I will not allow our great country to be sold out by anti-Trump haters in the dying newspaper industry,” offered a typical Trump tweet in late July “… As an example, the failing New York Times and the Amazon Washington Post do nothing but write bad stories even on very positive achievements — and they will never change!”
Trump has also tried to rally the public against the press by referring to much of the work of journalists he dislikes as “fake news.”
In 2017, the President even tweeted a doctored video of himself pummeling a man with a CNN logo plastered on his face.
Trump captioned the media hit with the hashtags "#FraudNewsCNN #FNN.”
An August poll showed that a majority of Republicans agreed that the media is the enemy of the people, while only 5% of Democrats and 24% of independents felt the same way. The Quinnipiac University poll said 65% of those questioned said they believe the news media is “an important part of democracy.”
The poll also revealed that 44% of American voters are concerned that Trump’s criticism of the news media will lead to violence against people who work in the industry.