Latest / Best of: Features / 6 citizens sue Trump, saying media ban deprives them of news as audience stakeholders

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6 citizens sue Trump, saying media ban deprives them of news as audience stakeholders · Best of: Features

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  Six citizens sue Trump, saying media ban deprives them of news as
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  audience stakeholders. This article is being
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  read by an automated voice generated by Everlet. In the increasingly bitter
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  legal standoff between President Donald Trump and media outlets, whose reporting he
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  dislikes, a new and crucial third party has emerged. Citizens who watch
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  and read the news and need it to do their jobs. A
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  lawsuit filed Monday on behalf of six such citizens, essentially representing the
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  wider public audience, argues, that it's not only the right of news
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  organizations that are violated when Trump bans them from White House premises.
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  Even more fundamentally, the lawsuit argues, such bans violate the public's right
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  to independent reporting about its president and government. The ultimate injury here
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  is to The
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  Democratic public, says the suit, filed in Federal District Court in New
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  York against Trump, and three key aides, including the White House Chief
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  of Staff, Susie Wiles. The First Amendment protects the public's right to
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  know what its government is doing, said Katie Fallow, deputy litigation director
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  at the Knight First Amendment Institute, which filed the lawsuit on behalf
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  of the plaintiffs, along with the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic
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  at Yale Law School. The White House cannot decide what information Americans
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  receive by punishing critical reporting, Fallow said in a statement. When the
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  White House expels reporters because of their coverage and threatens others with
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  expulsion, it isn't just the press that suffers. The public loses access
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  to independent reporting and gets something closer to government propaganda. The Trump
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  administration, asked for comment on the lawsuit, responded in a statement that
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  it attributed to an unidentified White House official, No person may demand
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  access to the Oval Office. It said media that peddle misinformation and
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  defamation are completely capable of reporting their manufactured stories from directly outside.
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  The plaintiffs all rely on White House news for their work. The
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  six plaintiffs are all people who say they rely on independent and
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  diverse White House reporting for their teaching, journalism, or advocacy. They include
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  a noted human rights advocate, a political journalist, a Yale history professor,
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  a high school civics teacher, a legal journalist, and a student journalist
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  at the University of Pennsylvania. The complaint filed Monday reaccounts how various
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  news organizations that have been targeted by Trump are already battling the
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  administration in the courts. These case include the current lawsuit by CNN,
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  MS Now and Politico, whose journalists were banished from The White House
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  in September. A federal judge recently extended an order preventing the White
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  House from enforcing the ban while the case makes its way through
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  the legal system. Still affected, though, is CNN's pool coverage of Trump.
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  The White House has been denying the network its usual slots in
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  the video pool covering the President's activities and travel, and CNN has
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  threatened further action. Also continuing is the legal case involving the Associated
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  Press, whose reporters were barred last year from the Oval Office, Air
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  Force One, and some events in retaliation for the outlet's decision not
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  to follow Trump's lead in changing the name of the Gulf of
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  Mexico, which lies partially in Mexican and other waters, to The
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  Gulf of America. The New York Times is also involved in litigation
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  over a Pentagon policy requiring escorts for journalists on its grounds, and
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  ABC is fighting back against the Trump administration in a dispute over
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  renewal of its broadcast licenses. This lawsuit seeks more wide ranging relief.
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  The new lawsuit filed Monday, though, is different from previous legal action
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  against the President. First in that the plaintiffs are ordinary citizens, shifting
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  the focus from news gatherers to news consumers, and thus implying a
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  much larger pool of stakeholders. The lawsuit reframes the current debate over
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  White House access in at least one key way. The public right
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  to receive information is part of established law, said Jamil Jaffer, executive
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  director of the Knight Institute. However, nobody has yet asserted this right
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  in relation to the White House press corps and the issues currently
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  at stake. We wanted to put The injury to the public at
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  the center of the conversation, Joffer said. It's one thing for CNN
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  to say, we are here because the public needs us, he said.
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  It's another for a member of the public to say that interference
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  with the White House press corps undermines our right to information about
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  the government. In addition, the litigation seeks more wide ranging relief. The
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  suit which names Trump as defendant, along with Wiles, White House Communications
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  Director Stephen Chung, and Secret Service Director Sean M. Curran, calls not
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  merely for reinstatement of access that has already been impacted, but for
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  a broad injunction that would protect from retaliation every news outlet that
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  covers the White House, now and in the future. Defendant's policy of
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  restricting the access of disfavored news organizations deprives the public of the
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  reporting of those organizations, the complaint says. It also inevitably deprives
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  them of the independent reporting of other news organizations as well, since
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  every journalist who reports from the White House must now account for
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  the possibility that a critical or ill advised word about The President
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  may result in their access being summarily restricted or revoked. Plaintiffs seek
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  a declaration that the policy is unconstitutional because it imposes restrictions on
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  a limited public forum that are viewpoint based and unreasonable, the complaint
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  adds. They also seek an injunction barring defendants from enforcing the policy.
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  Plaintiffs include a human rights advocate, a high school teacher, and a
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  student journalist, Plaintiff Ethan Young, a student at the University of Pennsylvania
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  and editor in chief of the Daily Pennsylvanian, said in an interview
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  that Whitehorse reporting has become increasingly important at his college newspaper during
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  Trump's second term. Over the last two years we've seen college campuses
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  be a key avenue where President Trump's policies have really affected people
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  across the country, and Penn's campus is no stranger to that, he
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  said. So I use White House reporting almost daily to look at
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  what's happening in both national higher education trends, but also just general
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  federal policy changes, to see what might impact Penn, Young said. You
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  never know what policy could have an impact on the Penn student
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  body. Especially important to Young and his colleagues at the paper is
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  a diversity of news outlets to choose from. We are not in
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  the room. We are not in Washington, Young said. The benefit of
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  having access to a variety of publications means I am constantly seeing
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  different questions being asked of White House officials. And more often than
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  not, he said, that means he'll get the answer to a question
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  he has too. The other plaintiffs are Kenneth Roth, former longtime Executive
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  Director of Human Rights Watch, and a lecturer at Yale's Law School
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  and School of Global Affairs. Daniel Frumkin, media and political journalist and
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  editor of Press Watch, a non profit that encourages political journalists to
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  fulfill their essential mission of creating an informed electorate and holding the
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  powerful accountable. Beverly Gage, Pulitzer Prize winning historian, and professor at Yale
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  University. Peter Schmidt-Nawara, a social studies and civics teacher at Brooklyn Technical
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  High School in New York. Benjamin Vites, Editor in Chief of Law
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  Fair and a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.