The Presidential election are just few weeks away. President Joe Biden stepped aside in July, and Vice President Kamala Harris secured her nomination for the Democratic Party, just a week after an assassination attempt on Donald Trump while the former president was speaking.
The election results could have a significant impact on press freedom issues.
Press freedom advocates monitor arrests and assaults on journalists at protests and attempt to pass legislation that would reduce government transparency. Protecting the work and information of confidential sources remains a primary concern, so the media is pushing for the passage of a federal shield law.
Journalists celebrated the return of Evan Gershkovich of The Wall Street Journal, who was released after a prisoner exchange with Russia. Gershkovich had been convicted in Russia of alleged espionage.
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker has recorded 59 assaults on journalists since March 2024. The Republican and Democratic conventions and protests around the war in the Middle East may have incentivized these attacks.
In July, a Chicago Reader journalist reported being beaten by police. Officers told him they could revoke reporters' press credentials if they refused to comply with dispersal orders.
In June, a freelance photojournalist was pepper-sprayed, and his camera was knocked down while documenting a clash between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli protesters in Los Angeles. Nine other journalists were assaulted that day. Many journalists were in danger when shots were fired during the Trump assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Photojournalists from outlets like the Associated Press, The Washington Post, and The New York Times captured images under the threat of gunfire, and reporters from the BBC and NBC immediately began speaking with witnesses. No journalists suffered severe injuries that day.
Former President Trump continues to criticize the media. After the first assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, journalists on the scene reported heated exchanges with rally attendees who chanted at the press present: "Fake news," "This is your fault," and "You're next." After a second assassination attempt in September, Trump appeared on Fox News Digital and said of the shooter: "[The shooter] believed in Biden and Harris's rhetoric and acted accordingly. Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot." Although he did not directly blame the press for the shooting, these comments came days after the first debate between Trump and Harris.
After it was reported that Harris had won the debate, many high-ranking Republicans and Trump spokespeople criticized ABC News and its moderators. David Bossie, a Trump adviser and member of the Republican National Committee, said: "You have two moderators who acted as agents of the Harris campaign." Trump and his team have suggested that the media and its alleged bias toward Harris have led to attempts on his life.
Trump has also continued to use the courts to fight against his perceived critics in the media.
President Biden also criticized the media after intense coverage of his poor performance in the debate with Trump. On a Zoom call with donors, the president's deputy campaign manager, Quentin Fulks, said: "The media has spent too much time exaggerating this. We are not going to be on the defensive in this campaign."
President Biden has been criticized for being less accessible to the press than his predecessors. Vice President Harris faced similar criticism during the early weeks of her campaign. Since announcing her candidacy in July, Harris has only agreed to one national television interview. The interview with CNN's Dana Bash was a joint appearance with her running mate, Governor Tim Walz.
At the state level, the media could be affected by legislation that would limit transparency. In Louisiana, Senate Bill 482, introduced in April, would create a broad public records exemption for state governments, allowing the denial of access to records reflecting opinions, recommendations, and deliberations about a process in which policy and governmental decisions are formulated.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed a new law allowing commercial applicants to pay to expedite their requests ahead of those made by journalists and the public. The law also makes it more difficult for media outlets with limited resources to obtain public records.
Subpoenas for journalistic work remain a concern. Current Department of Justice guidelines prevent the use of compulsory legal processes to obtain information from media engaged in news gathering, except in limited circumstances. However, this policy is not definitive and could easily change. Without a federal shield law, journalists remain susceptible to subpoenas. For this reason, in June, the Reporters Committee and 53 news organizations sent a letter to the Senate urging it to pass the PRESS Act, which is currently pending in the Senate Judiciary Committee. The PRESS Act has significant bipartisan support and was unanimously passed by the House of Representatives earlier this year. It would prohibit using subpoenas and search warrants to identify confidential sources and restrict the government's ability to subpoena third parties, such as email companies and search engine platforms, to obtain a journalist's metadata that could be used to reveal confidential sources.
Catherine Herridge, a former CBS News journalist, was found in civil contempt in February by a federal judge for refusing to comply with a subpoena requiring her to reveal the identity of a source. Herridge has since appealed the contempt ruling, and the Reporters Committee and 25 media organizations have filed an amicus curiae brief in support of her appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. An oral argument has not yet been scheduled.
After 478 days in a Russian prison, The Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich was released as part of a complex prisoner exchange. In March 2023, Gershkovich was detained by Russia's Federal Security Service while on a reporting assignment. He was accused of espionage. After a brief trial, Gershkovich was sentenced to 16 years in a maximum-security penal colony. He was one of 16 political prisoners exchanged for eight Russians who were imprisoned in the United States, Germany, Norway, Slovenia, and Poland. Also released was Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist for Radio Free Europe, who had been imprisoned in Russia for nearly a year.
