{"id":27382,"date":"2017-04-24T08:06:44","date_gmt":"2017-04-24T08:06:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=27382"},"modified":"2017-04-24T08:06:44","modified_gmt":"2017-04-24T08:06:44","slug":"floyd-abrams-sees-trumps-anti-media-tweets-as-double-edged-swords","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/politics\/floyd-abrams-sees-trumps-anti-media-tweets-as-double-edged-swords.html","title":{"rendered":"Floyd Abrams Sees Trump\u2019s Anti-Media Tweets as Double-Edged Swords"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<strong><span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size:22px;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\">Floyd Abrams Sees Trump&rsquo;s Anti-Media Tweets as Double-Edged Swords<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong><br \/>\n<\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\">Last Monday, the sun rose in the east, the black-capped chickadee sang its spring mating song and President Trump attacked American journalists in a tweet. This latest one read: &ldquo;The Fake Media (not Real Media) has gotten even worse since the election. Every story is badly slanted. We have to hold them to the truth!&rdquo;<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">\n\t\tThe Fake Media (not Real Media) has gotten even worse since the election. Every story is badly slanted. We have to hold them to the truth!\n\t<\/p>\n<p>\t&mdash; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/realDonaldTrump\/status\/853945633903923200\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">April 17, 2017<\/a>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\">Yet even as the shock effect wears off (should it ever?), Mr. Trump&rsquo;s anti-media Twitter posts still serve as reminders of his campaign vows to &ldquo;open&rdquo; libel laws, his veiled threats to punish corporate owners of news organizations whose coverage he does not like and his occasional calls for leak investigations.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\">They took on a more ominous tone later in the week, as the Justice Department began considering whether to bring a case against WikiLeaks that the Obama administration decided against pursuing, fearing it would start a trend of prosecuting news organizations and criminalizing journalism.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\">If the Trump administration decides it has no such qualms &mdash; Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in interviews last week that he was &ldquo;not sure&rdquo; it did &mdash; then the president&rsquo;s tweets just might wind up being journalism&rsquo;s great insurance policy.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\">His Twitter trail could be a gift to lawyers for the news industry during leak investigations into articles that made the president mad enough to pick up his Android and tap, Tap, TAP!<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\">It could provide great grist for legal arguments that the investigations are less about prosecuting damaging leaks than they are about punishing journalists.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\">That, at least, is the view of Floyd Abrams, the titan of free speech jurisprudence. He&rsquo;s best known for successfully defending clients like The New York Times against the Nixon administration&rsquo;s attempts to stop it from printing the Pentagon Papers, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art against Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani&rsquo;s move to cut city support because of an exhibition he called sacrilegious.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\">Now Mr. Abrams is seeking to re-educate the public about the thing that stands between it and, say, becoming Russia: the First Amendment.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\">The occasion of my recent visit to his downtown Manhattan office was the publication of his new book, &ldquo;The Soul of the First Amendment,&rdquo; which he called &ldquo;really a story of American exceptionalism.&rdquo; It argues that the United States&rsquo; protections for free speech are the best in the world, at least as of now. (The book comes out on Tuesday.)<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\">Mr. Abrams has a way of angering people all along the political spectrum. For all the points he has scored with liberals over the years, he helped argue the conservative side of the Citizens United case, which allowed corporations and unions to spend more freely in elections.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\">He is not forlorn about the prospects for free speech under the new administration. But he isn&rsquo;t sanguine, either, especially after the news about a potential WikiLeaks prosecution. In his book, Mr. Abrams harshly criticizes WikiLeaks as irresponsible, but he said criminal charges against the group would be &ldquo;a perilous step in terms of First Amendment protection.&rdquo;<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\">In other words: Be afraid, at least a little afraid.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\">With Rachmaninoff&rsquo;s Piano Concerto No. 3 playing softly in the background, Mr. Abrams, a hearty 80 years old, walked me through what he worries about and what he doesn&rsquo;t.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\">If you want to start out by looking on the bright side, things have been much worse. There were days when censorship was rampant and real reporting could land you in prison, right here in the United States. For instance, as Mr. Abrams&rsquo;s book notes, it was not all that atypical when, in 1901, a Chicago court sentenced the managing editor and a reporter at The Chicago American to jail for an article that was critical of one of its decisions.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\">Mr. Abrams said that by the second half of the last century, the courts had begun to view &ldquo;the First Amendment in an expansive and generally highly protective way.&rdquo; It started with liberal jurists and eventually spread to the conservative jurists as well, which Mr. Abrams called &ldquo;one of the most remarkable developments of the last 20 years.&rdquo;<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\">That bodes well for news organizations in general, he said.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\">I wondered about Gawker, which a Florida jury hit with a $140 million verdict in an invasion-of-privacy lawsuit last year. Without the financial wherewithal to fight on through the appeals process, its owners went into bankruptcy and sold to Univision.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\">But Mr. Abrams said, &ldquo;I think Gawker would have won if it had had a chance to go higher.&rdquo;<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\">Juries, he said, have always shown a willingness to punish journalists &mdash; who are down there with lawyers in the public esteem rankings &mdash; just as appellate courts are often willing to reverse those juries. Mr. Trump&rsquo;s anti-press remarks, he acknowledged, certainly do not help with the jury pool.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\">That&rsquo;s not, however, Mr. Abrams&rsquo;s chief area of worry.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\">&ldquo;My concerns on the Trump level are more in two areas,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;One, the potential use of the Espionage Act against journalists reporting on national security-related matters, and the other is leak investigations in which the journalists are called to testify.&rdquo;<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\">The Obama administration set the tone by bringing more cases against leakers than all of the administrations that preceded it combined, often by using the Espionage Act, which it invoked, for instance, in its attempt to obtain emails from the Fox News reporter James Rosen.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\">The headline on an op-ed that the New York Times correspondent James Risen wrote late last year was pointed in its assignment of blame: &ldquo;If Donald Trump Targets Journalists, Thank Obama.&rdquo;<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\">The last administration spent about seven years seeking to compel Mr. Risen to testify in a criminal leak investigation involving classified information in his 2006 book, &ldquo;State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration.&rdquo;<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\">Though it ultimately didn&rsquo;t require him to testify &mdash; most likely for public relations reasons, Mr. Risen figures &mdash; it won the right to do so in the Fourth Circuit, where the United States Court of Appeals ruled that the First Amendment didn&rsquo;t protect reporters from subpoenas to testify about &ldquo;criminal conduct&rdquo; that they &ldquo;personally witnessed or participated in.&rdquo;<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\">In other words, Mr. Abrams said, the appellate court ruled that &ldquo;there&rsquo;s no protection for journalists at all in front of grand juries.&rdquo; (The Supreme Court declined to hear the case.)<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\">But that&rsquo;s where the tweets come in, Mr. Abrams said.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\">He pointed to a concurring opinion in a Supreme Court case in 1972, Branzburg v. Hayes, which the press lost. It read, &ldquo;No harassment of newsmen will be tolerated.&rdquo;<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\">That is, &ldquo;the court will not allow the government to try to punish the press by the use of subpoena,&rdquo; Mr. Abrams said.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\">So, if a reporter is swept up in a leak investigation over an article the administration doesn&rsquo;t like, his or her lawyers would just have to log on to Twitter and search @RealDonaldTrump to find support for an argument that the government was misusing the legal system to punish journalists.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\">&ldquo;&lsquo;Enemy of the people&rsquo; would be on page one&rdquo; of any defense, Mr. Abrams said, referring to Mr. Trump&rsquo;s post describing reporters as such.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\">Mr. Abrams said he wrote another book at age 80 to help people &ldquo;understand how fortunate we are that we wound up with a Bill of Rights in the first place.&rdquo;<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size:8px;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\">source:-https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/04\/23\/business\/media\/floyd-abrams-sees-trumps-anti-media-tweets-as-double-edged-swords.html?ref=politics<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-background-color\">\n\t\t\t  <div \n\t\t\t  \tclass = \"fb-comments\" \n\t\t\t  \tdata-href = \"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/politics\/floyd-abrams-sees-trumps-anti-media-tweets-as-double-edged-swords.html\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-numposts = \"10\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-lazy = \"true\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-colorscheme = \"light\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-order-by = \"social\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-mobile=true>\n\t\t\t  <\/div><\/div>\n\t\t  <style>\n\t\t    .fb-background-color {\n\t\t\t\tbackground: #ffffff !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t.fb_iframe_widget_fluid_desktop iframe {\n\t\t\t    width: 630px !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t  <\/style>\n\t\t  ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Floyd Abrams Sees Trump&rsquo;s Anti-Media Tweets as Double-Edged Swords Last Monday, the sun rose in the east, the black-capped chickadee sang its spring mating song and President Trump attacked American journalists in a tweet. This latest one read: &ldquo;The Fake Media (not Real Media) has gotten even worse since the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27383,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[10324,17246,10877,10979],"class_list":["post-27382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-breaking-news-usa","tag-floyd-abrams-sees-trumps-anti-media-tweets-as-double-edged-swords","tag-latest-news-usa","tag-latest-sport-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}