Every year of my journalistic career of nearly half a century, I have known only a free and independent press in the United States.
My professional start was in the 1970s. Those were years when Americans could see clearly how the press served democracy:
With the publication of the Pentagon Papers, first by The New York Times, the American public learned of the failures its government had covered up during a long war in Vietnam that cost so many lives. And then there was Watergate, an investigation spearheaded by The Washington Post. U.S. citizens learned how their president had weaponized the government against his political adversaries, abusing his powers and sabotaging the Constitution.
In the decades since those revelations, I took for granted that my country would always enjoy press freedom — and that the First Amendment of our Constitution would guarantee it. I no longer take any of that for granted. I no longer assume that the constitutional order will hold in the United States. Or that the rule of law will prevail. Or that free expression — not just for the press, but for all Americans — will endure.
That is because we have a president who has demonstrated disdain for traditional restraints o
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