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The RTNDA presented its annual First Amendment Awards to leading broadcast journalists Thursday evening, providing a platform for those reporters and others to express their deep concerns about the Trump administration’s on-going efforts to suppress press freedoms and to encourage each other to resist them.
“[T]hings seem as if they have never been crazier than they are right now in politics and journalism,” RTDNA President Dan Shelley said in his opening remarks. “Make no mistake, this is not recency bias. This is escalation. The weaponization of critical government press offices against the press has almost become the rule, not the exception.”
Trump, with the help of defamation lawyers and his hand-picked chairman of the FCC, Brendan Carr, has targeted the Associated Press and all the major broadcast networks, including PBS and NPR.
Shelley called for resistance.
“Governing by granting press room access to far-right conspiracy propagandists. No. Hell no.
“Kicking traditional bona fide and responsible news organizations out of their long-standing Pentagon workspaces. No.
“Picking the news organizations you want to be in your presidential press pool? No.”
The RTDNA recognize the Associated Press with a citation for courage for not backing down after Trump barred it was the White House press room for refusing to change its widely used stylebook to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America as he had demanded.
Shelley said that the best way to counter Trump is to double down on fact-based, fearless reporting and to assert the First Amendment in court.
“Our audiences either cannot tell or do