Speaker 1: And we're back now with more Reset. I'm your host, Sasha Anne simons. As many members of the press have found it difficult to gain access and report on the ground from inside Columbia University's campus. Student journalists. There have risen to the occasion even when they faced threats of arrest yesterday while reporting on campus protests calling for the university to divest from companies linked to Israel. Here's W KCR reporter Ian Humphrey giving an update from Pulitzer Hall last

Speaker 2: night. We are in fact stuck in here because again, we don't want to get arrested. We were threatened to be arrested if we left the Pulitzer Building, but we have a very good view through one of the lecture halls right now. I see right now. Yeah, there is a canine unit.

Speaker 1: This issue isn't unique to Colombia overarching national legislation is threatening the rights of journalists. And we've seen our share of local violations last year when a daily Southtown reporter asked what was deemed as too many questions to city employees about recent flooding in the area. Calumet city responded with multiple citations. In recent months. Some Chicago journalists have struggled to gain access to city Hall during council meetings with World Press Freedom Day. Fast approaching on Friday. We want to understand the scope of this issue. Now, our guest is Seth Stern, the director of Advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation. Hi, Seth, welcome to Reset. It's great to be here. Set the scene for us. What are the biggest threats to press freedom right now? What's, what's top of mind for you?

Speaker 3: Well, what we've been seeing is a trend of criminalizing routine news gathering. It seems that actions that law enforcement prosecutors wouldn't have contemplated taking years ago because everyone has some awareness of the first amendments. Everyone has some awareness that it's not illegal. As you say in the Hank Sanders case for journalists to ask questions for a story. We're seeing these things happen at a sort of alarming clip. You know, last year there was national news when the Marion County record in Kansas, their newsroom was raided tragically by police all over a journalist referring to a public website to consult public records. You know, there's a case Los Angeles right now where the city of Los Angeles. So this isn't just some rural issue. The city of Los Angeles is suing a journalist for publishing records that the city itself gave him pursuant to a public records request in Alabama. Last year, we saw a journalist arrested literally for printing the news. The charging document said for publishing a news report. It was over a a grand jury investigation he'd reported on the claim was that he had violated grand jury secrecy laws which only pertain to grand jurors and people there. The press is allowed to, to do that. So that's really what we're seeing all around is just sort of a lack of sensitivity on the pack on the part of elected officials and law enforcement to the rights of journalists

Speaker 1: given all of that Seth. I mean, how would you characterize the state of press freedom today compared to say the last decade?

Speaker 3: There have always been threats to press freedom and unfortunately, there are places in the world where the situation is a lot worse than it is here, but it is deteriorating, I would say. And it's something that's alarming a lot of people and sort of in the backdrop, we've got a front runner for the presidency who is vocal about wanting to lock up journalists, specifically journalists who receive leaks from, from, from whistleblowers. Now this isn't just a Trump problem. There are plenty of other anti press elected officials, both at the state and local level. And um Democratic administrations have also spied on journalists surveil journalists threatened to arrest journalists for not burning their sources. We see the prosecution of Julian Assange, which Trump started but Biden continued as being particularly problematic and sort of an existential threat to press freedom. So it's not just a Trump issue, but it is alarming that we're seeing this trend develop and we're handing all of this authority to go after the press to the government at a time when it's very possible, we'll have a second Trump term in the near future.

Speaker 1: This is also a time where we're seeing cuts to journalism jobs and cuts to local news networks. How is press freedom affected by changes like that to our

Speaker 3: industry? You know, I think that that's a big part of the trend that I mentioned. there is not as much awareness of press freedom because there aren't as many media cases in front of the courts. Public officials aren't dealing with journalists as often as they used to all because there are fewer journalists employed due to the the economic problems facing the um the news industry. So, whereas, you know, when I started practicing law before I joined Freedom of the Press Foundation, I was a medium first amendment lawyer. If I drew a judge who let's say had 10 years experience on the bench, odds are I was not the first case that judge had seen where press rights were were at issue. They'd seen a few nowadays, you might draw a judge who's been on the bunch 10 years and, and, and their only real knowledge of the press freedom clause of the first amendment is from law school. There's just this decline in understanding and prioritization of the first amendment. People know it exists, but they don't quite realize that there are situations where other rights might even have to take a back seat to free speech and free press.

Speaker 1: Let's jump into some of that legislation. I alluded to earlier Seth recently Congress passed a bill that strengthens the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. What does that mean? So the

Speaker 3: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, there's a section of it, section 702, which allows the government to essentially enlist telecoms providers say Google or Verizon to hand over communications with foreign targets. So the target of surveillance is a foreigner, but the other party to the communication, others involved might be Americans and their communications get intercepted. The new legislation. RSA expands it beyond telecoms. Any service provider can be ordered to spy for the government and, and, and this isn't just coming from me. An example that came from a sitting Senator Ron Wyden was that a cleaning crew that cleans an office building could be compelled by the government to install a thumb drive to help the government surveil somebody in that office buildings, communications with a foreign target and newsrooms, journalists are not exempted from that. And what effect is that going to have when a journalist wants to communicate with a foreign source? They say the foreign source has heard about this. They're not going to talk to an American journalist if they think the newsroom might be bugged. Now, do I think that the government's going to go out and bug newsrooms tomorrow? No, probably not by all accounts. The intent of the law was not to reach newsrooms but to reach data centers which were not included in, in, in the existing law. But it's pretty well established that if you give the government ambiguous broad authorities, eventually somebody's going to abuse them, whether it's President Biden, President Trump or someone we don't even know about yet. And Rasa

Speaker 1: is reforming intelligence and securing America Act. Right. Senator Dick Durbin is also sponsoring a bill that could protect journalists from disclosing their sources to the federal government. What's the status?

Speaker 3: So the bill you're talking about is the Press Act. That acronym I do know protect reporters from exploitative state spying act. That bill passed the house without objection unanimously and it's actually passed the house two Congresses in a row. Now it's pending in the Senate Judiciary Committee of which Senator Durbin, who has been a great supporter of this bill. He's the chair of that committee, the senior Republican on the committee is Lindsey Graham who actually also sponsors this bill. So it's got bipartisan support and the hope is that it'll pass this year. Chuck Schumer recently said he wants to see it pass this year. So there's real support behind it and what the Press Act does. Let's not forget that is it protects journalist source confidentiality. It restricts the government from being able to subpoena surveil spy on journalists. And again, we've seen President from both administrations secretly spy on journalists through their email providers, phone providers attempt threatened journalists with jail time for not outing their sources. And how

Speaker 1: is it similar or different from Illinois's shield bill.

Speaker 3: 49 states including Illinois have some protection of journalist source confidentiality. The federal government does not. So when journalists are talking to sources and the source wants to be assured that they're not going to be burned, the journalists can't really tell them confidently because they don't know where litigation might ensue. They don't, you know, you can, you can sue anywhere and it all depends on what court the litigation ends up in. So the Press Act would bring consistency. You know, here in Chicago, our federal appellate court is the, is the seventh circuit which does not protect journalist source confidentiality. It's one of the worst appellate circuits in the country on that issue. So it would be particularly important to Chicago area journalists who's who, who might end up subpoenaed by a federal court governed by the, the, the seventh circuit. I mean, we've seen this in Chicago with Jim Draga, the journalist who broke the R. Kelly story, the journalist who, who received the anonymous videotape and, and reported the, the, the, the story that ended up sending Kelly to, to prison and I understand his sentence was recently upheld. He's been subpoenaed twice once in R. Kelly's eight court trial which I think was back in 2009 or something around there again in R. Kelly's Federal trial in 2022. So, you know, I think regardless of politics, Republican Democrat, everyone can agree that we want someone like Jim DeRogatis to be able to expose someone like R. Kelly as a, as a predator without being impeded by subpoenas. So that's what the Press Act would help with at least in federal court. So we

Speaker 1: talked earlier, Seth about that daily Southtown reporter who faced citations for seeking comment on, on flooding issues in calumet city. That case received national attention, right? But these issues, they don't always make it to the papers, especially because as journalists, we often don't want to report on ourselves. We don't want to naval gaze if you will. How often do you think then that press violations go unreported or even unresolved?

Speaker 3: They often go unreported by major media. It's our organization, the Freedom of the Press Foundation operates what's called the U.S.. Press Freedom Tracker, which is a news site that, that attempts to document all press freedom violations across America that fit into a number of categories. They include subpoenas, arrests of journalists, assaults of journalists prior restraints on publication and, and they do great work, but it's, it's exponentially more effective when the national media or even major local metropolitan papers pick up on a story like what happened to Mr Sanders or the Marion County record raid. And although I understand the concern about Naval Gazing, you know, it's ultimately the the readers who who suffer from that because people do care about press freedom violations. People care about their constitutional rights. If someone's reading the newspaper, they want quality journalism, they want the free unimpeded press and you know, nobody's hesitant to report on the second amendment, gun rights. The sixth amendment, you know, right to a fair trial. Fourth amendment, privacy issues, constitutional rights are recognized as newsworthy and the first amendment is just the same and it shouldn't suffer only because it has an impact on journalists. Journalists can disclose any direct involvement they have, but they need to cover those stories. It's really the only way that we're going to fight back against this, this trend. Well, here

Speaker 1: in chicago over the past few months, public attendance rules have shifted at city Hall and we've been hearing stories of journalists, you know, seeing them even post on X formerly known as Twitter about struggling to get into city council meetings. What's the danger there? Set of restricting that kind of access that we've become so used to

Speaker 3: having. Well, news is made at city council meetings and when you can't have all the time, yeah, even news that people don't know is going to be made in advance. So when you don't have journalists there, you're relying on after the fact spin that might be reported late, might be incomplete. Public information officers and other spokespeople for government agencies, they might feel like they're giving the press the whole story. But the press shouldn't be required to rely on official accounts. The press should be able to see for themselves when news is made and be able to report it to their audience immediately, not later and be able to follow up and ask public officials questions after a meeting. It's not only about seeing the meeting in person, you know. Yes, you might be able to read a summary later, but when you're there and when you're there for the meeting, you can, you can ask sources questions, you can find out more. You can see the audience's reaction, you can see who is in the room. Well, many of

Speaker 1: those rules set at City Hall, they've been created because of the contentious debates around Israel and Gaza. What kinds of threats are facing? Journalists who are in the war zone itself,

Speaker 3: the threat of death, primarily their lives. Yeah, I, I don't have the latest number in front of me but somewhere close to 100 or even over 100 journalists depending who you ask have been killed in, in, in the war in Gaza so far, not just in Gaza and Lebanon and other areas affected as well. So, you know, you've got to lead with that, the threat to journalists lives. The other major component of it though is access other than journalists who agree to embed with the ID f pursuant to pretty restrictive terms, journalists are not being allowed into Gaza. So all the information we're getting is from Palestinian journalists or other journalists who happen to have already been there prior to October 7th and then journalists who want to leave have a pretty hard time doing that as well.

Speaker 1: And there's arrests here for journalists covering the wave of protests related to Gaza, including the recent college campuses that we've been seeing. Talk more about that.

Speaker 3: Yeah, it's, although my focus is on the press. Um II I still care about free speech more generally. So it's just really tragic to see snipers on rooftops of American Universities and college professors at my Alma Mater Emory in Atlanta being slammed to the ground and arrested for trying to help some, some protester. It's really in an awful situation for, for, for speech overall, for the press as well. We saw a photojournalist in Austin arrested a few days ago and I'm sure there will be other, other instances like that where, where journalists are, are, are arrested at. These protests protests are always rife with trouble for, for journalists. We saw that during the Black Lives Matter protests in 20 20/100 journalists, I think nationwide were arrested, many of them afterwards sued and won significant damages awards but it does not appear to have had an impact. Um Journalists are still routinely arrested at protests. There's this mentality among law enforcement that when they disperse a crowd, the journalists should go to, well, similar to what we were talking about at city Hall. The dispersal of a crowd of protesters is newsworthy. We will never know, we'll never know about these abuses by law enforcement if journalists have to leave along with the protests. And the Department of Justice has recognized that as of late in its report on the Minneapolis Police Department's response to protests of the murder of George Floyd. The DOJ recognized that and it hasn't in the past. So that was significant. The DOJ recognized that journalists even after a protest is, is dispersed, have a constitutional right to cover the news. But recognizing that in some report that only press freedom advocates read and making sure that actually happens in practice, are, are, are two entirely different things and when police have, you know, qualified immunity so that there's really no personal repercussions when they violate press freedom or other constitutional rights. Those reports tend to exist only on paper.

Speaker 1: So leave us with this. We know technology is rapidly changing, Seth. What threats do you think could be on the horizon for the press?

Speaker 3: Well, when we talk about surveillance reform like RSA and FISA, which we were talking about earlier, newsrooms need to update and stay up to date on their digital security practices, it's always crucial to communicate through encrypted channels to avoid the kind of surveillance that, that, that we're talking about to the extent possible. You know, we do digital security trainings for journalists all over the world, not me personally. But our organization and the ability to communicate with journalists confidentially is, is absolutely crucial. It's, it's journalists can't do their jobs if people are afraid to come forward and talk to them because they think they're going to be outed and lose their careers or their freedom. So technology needs to keep up with that newsroom. Technology needs to keep up with that, which is challenging in an era where many journalists are suffering. But, you know, journalism obviously needs to evolve. The current business models clearly aren't all that sustainable. It won't look in 10 years like it does now. So new threats are going to arise and we just need to be cautious because there's going to be before something hopefully great grows out of, you know, the, the rubble of the old media. They're going, there's going to be a time where journalist is vulnerable where the press is vulnerable, where it's not well funded, well resourced public officials are going to try to take advantage of that situation. So we've got to be vigilant in, in pushing back against that.

Speaker 1: We'll leave it there. We've been talking to Seth Stern, who's the director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation. Thank you so much. Thank

Speaker 3: you.

WBEZ transcripts are generated by an automatic speech recognition service. We do our best to edit for misspellings and typos, but mistakes do come through.