Trump's body-slam of First Amendment rights
Earlier this summer when the Boston Globe coordinated a campaign that encouraged more than 400 newspapers to publish editorials promoting freedom of the press and criticizing President Trump’s frequent attacks on the media The Herald Editorial Board declined to participate.
We opted not to join the chorus not because we disagreed with the message from fellow journalists; instead, we believed it best to keep our voice independent and to express our criticisms of the Trump administration — as we have done in the past — when there was reason.
There is reason now.
News continues to roil over the certain murder of Washington Post columnist, U.S. resident and Saudi national Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. Khashoggi, a frequent critic of the leadership of his own country, entered the consulate to file routine papers but did not leave alive.
In the midst of shifting explanations meant to distance Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman from the slaying — including the ludicrous claim that the 59-year-old reporter “died in a fistfight” with 15 Saudi nationals — it’s become clear that Khashoggi’s death was politically motivated. Even as Saudi Arabia has been celebrated for recent modest reforms — including allowing women to drive and movie theaters to open in the fundamentalist Islamic nation — it has also continued its repression of dissidents and those calling for greater civil freedoms.
Against that backdrop — and President Trump’s vacillating stances on who might be responsible for Khashoggi’s death and what sanction of Saudi Arabia he would find acceptable — Trump traveled late last week to Montana for a political rally for Republican congressional candidates.
Among the candidates is Rep. Greg Gianforte, a New Jersey transplant to the Big Sky state, who is running for re-election following his attack last year on a reporter for The Guardian.
Asked a question on health care by reporter Ben Jacobs, Gianforte, in an assault witnessed by other reporters and recorded on audio, grabbed Jacobs by the neck, slammed his body to the ground and punched him several times. Gianforte was found guilty of misdemeanor assault, sentenced to community service and anger management treatment and fined $300.
Gianforte won election to Congress last year to an unexpired term.
Gianforte has since apologized to Jacobs, but Trump — who has repeatedly painted members of the news media as “enemies of the people” and decried respected publications as “FAKE NEWS” — could not resist celebrating the assault of a reporter who asked a question of a candidate.
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/editorial-trumps-body-slam-of-first-amendment-rights/
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