Freedom of the Press Foundation says...

This discusses an interview 2025-05-08 with Seth Stern and Lauren Harper about the Freedom of the Press Foundation. A video and 29:00 mm:ss podcast excerpted from the interview will be added when available. The podcast will be released 2025-05-17 to the fortnightly "Media & Democracy" show syndicated for the Pacifica Radio Network of over 200 community radio stations.

It is posted here to invite others to contribute other perspectives, subject to the Wikimedia rules of writing from a neutral point of view while citing credible sources and treating others with respect.

2025-05-08 nterview with Seth Stern and Lauren Harper, Director of Advocacy and Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy, respectively, for Freedom of the Press Foundation

29:00 mm:ss of excerpts from a 2025-05-08 interview with Seth Stern and Lauren Harper of Freedom of the Press Foundation.

Seth Stern, Director of Advocacy for Freedom of the Press Foundation, and Lauren Harper, their Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy, discuss their work with Spencer Graves. Freedom of the Press Foundation works to protect journalists and their sources in several ways:

• SecureDrop: They develop and maintain their open source whistleblower submission system to facilitate anonymous and secure communications between sources and journalists. The project was begun in part by Aaron Swartz, who tragically killed himself under intense pressure from the FBI on questionable grounds.
• Digital security education for news organizations.
• U.S. Press Freedom tracker, documenting attacks on journalists including assaults and arrests for activities that seemingly should be protected by the First Amendment. They documented 2,530 such attacks on secrecy, surveillance, and the rights of journalists and whistleblowers in the 8 years between 2017 and 2024. A third of those attacks were in the single year 2020, the last year of President Trump's first term.
• Staying current on these issues.

One "featured issue" in the last category says, "Reform Government Secrecy", claiming that, "The U.S. classifies far too many secrets, obstructing democracy." This includes "‘The Classified Catalog’ launches to track secrecy news", numerous things the Trump administration has done since 2025-01-20 to erode "the information environment in ways this country has never seen. These steps changes include the following:

• Deleted thousands of datasets from agency websites.
• Closed agencies’ Freedom of Information Act offices.
• Used disappearing messaging apps and failed to preserve government records.
• Ordered federal health agencies to stop communicating with the public.
• Gutted a key surveillance oversight board.
• Mass-fired inspectors general.
• Replaced independent, professional leadership at the National Archives with unqualified appointees.
• Attempted to illegally destroy agency records.

US government secrecy

Complicity in nuclear proliferation

Graves asked about claims by Richard Barlow that the US State Department had clandestinely supported illegal exports of "dual use technologies" to Pakistan, without which Pakistan would likely not have nuclear weapons today -- and North Korea got some of their nuclear technology from Pakistan. Harper ageed, noting that she had previously worked with the National Security Archive. William Burr directs their "Nuclear Vault", which contains resources from their "Nuclear Documentation Project". He has led a decades-long struggle to get records that are 50, 60 and 70 years old declassified. Many documents they get are so heavily redacted that you cannot make sense out of any of it. This "makes it more difficult for current policymakers to craft effective and rational nuclear policy."

Moynihan Commission on Government Secrecy

Graves then asked about the Moynihan Commission on Government Secrecy of the 1990s. Harper said "they basically said that government secrecy effectively works as a form of government regulation, because the public cannot engage in their right to selfgovern when they don't have access to this information that the government routinely overclassifies. One of the things they suggested over 30 years ago and we still haven't done is that the Senate should get involved, and the Congress should get involved in legislating on classification."

Harper mentioned a couple of bills to reform government secrecy that had been introduced in the last Congress but died in committee. She hopes they will get reintroduced.

Claims of national security

Graves asked about "state secrets privilege". Stern said that it severely limits the ability of anyone to question a claim of national security. "We are seeing the Trump administration frequently abuse the national security flag ... whenever it wants to make exceptions to the law." Occasionally a media outlet will write a story or an editorial expressing concern about such claims, but there's no follow-up reporting.

Stern noted that TikTok, an app hosting millions of posters, was banned based on admittedly hypothetical threats that China might use it to spy on Americans. Nothing was ever proven, "and now suddenly Donald Trump has decided he doesn't want to ban TikTok anymore, because he sees a route to make money off of it, and no one's concerned about national security."

Stern mentioned the discord leaks a couple years ago. It was a big story with plenty of reporting for two days that quoted "administration officials saying, 'The sky is falling. This is a major threat to national security. ... [P]eople are in danger for their lives.' ... Six months later, the sky is still there, and nothing has happened that these people predicted. There's no follow-up reporting."

The role of the media in sustaining the system of political corruption

Graves asked about the role of the media in sustaining the system of political corruption that threaten us and international security. Stern said,

“ One thing that the last few weeks have put to rest is the myth that billionaires and major conglomerates with interests far beyond the media or their news holdings can possibly run news outlets without impacting the direction of coverage -- without either directly or indirectly causing reporters to shy away from stories that might upset either business or political connections. ... [W]hen you had a president who was willing to threaten their business interests, ... they caved immediately. They settled defensible cases.

The case ABC settled was very defensible. ... When I was practicing law, I defended an almost identical case involving a college professor who had been accused of sexual assault. A newspaper reported he had been accused of rape. A judge threw that out, saying essentially the terms are interchangeable. How were you damaged? Find me someone who was willing to do business with an accused sexual assailant but drew the line at an accused rapist. That person doesn't exist. There are no damages. This is a frivolous case.

... CBS is currently mediating over editing of a video interview that is even more baseless. You will not find a First Amendement law expert in the world who is not wearing a Donald Trump lapel pin who is going to tell you that that case has any legal ground whatsoever. And it's pretty much an open secret, not even a secret, that the only reason CBS is even thinking about settling this case is because it wants the Trump administration to approve its merger. Essentially they are using the legal system to launder what would otherwise be called bribes, but which are okay as long as a judge signs off on it.

... Despite all the brilliant journalists who work for corporate media outlets -- and I'm not looking to knock anyone ... The New York Times, Washington Post, ABC, CBS, they all have incredible journalists working for them. But the end product is not in the hands of those individuals. How much any particular story gets headline news treatment versus gets burried. That's not in the hands of those individuals.

... I think it's really time for people who value well reported, independent, aggressive, adversarial journalism to support independent news outlets, nonprofit news outlets. Nonprofits aren't a perfect solution. You're still subject to the whims of donors.

”

Harper added that the money from the ABC settlement was reportedly "going to Trump's presidential library. But this isn't technically true. It was going to a private presidential foundation and museum, ... and those are private, effectively corporate entities with basically no campaign contribution limits ... . It's an excellent way and an excellent plact to put dark money. ... [I]t's being reported as going to something that's going to somehow enrich the public understanding of the Trump Presidency, which, of course, it won't."

Local news

Stern encourages people to "subscribe to their local papers. We've got news deserts all over this country."

Graves added that "local" should mean locally owned, not part of a major national chain. Stern agreed, saying that's what he meant by "local". Graves noted that was "not obvious. The Denver Post is not a local paper anymore." Seth replied, "You're exactly right."

Previous interview with Freedom of the Press Foundation

Graves previously interviewed Kirsten McCudden, Vice President of Editorial of Freedom of the Press Foundation not quite two years ago on 2023-07-18.

The need for media reform to improve democracy

This article is part of category:Media reform to improve democracy. We describe here briefly the motivation for this series.

One major contributor to the dominant position of the US in the international political economy today may have been the US Postal Service Act of 1792. Under that act, newspapers were delivered up to 100 miles for a penny when first class postage was between 6 and 25 cents. Alexis de Tocqueville, who visited the relatively young United States of America in 1831, wrote, “There is scarcely a hamlet that does not have its own newspaper.” McChesney and Nichols estimated that these newspaper subsidies were roughly 0.21 percent of national income (Gross Domestic Project, GDP) in 1841.

At that time, the US probably led the world by far in the number of independent newspaper publishers per capita or per million population. This encouraged literacy and limited political corruption, both of which contributed to making the US a leader in the rate of growth in average annual income (Gross Domestic Product, GDP, per capita). Corruption was also limited by the inability of a small number of publishers to dominate political discourse.

That began to change in the 1850s and 1860s with the introduction of high speed rotary presses, which increased the capital required to start a newspaper.

In 1887 William Randolph Hearst took over management of his father’s San Francisco Examiner. His success there gave him an appetite for building a newspaper chain. His 1895 purchase of the New York Morning Journal gave him a second newspaper. By the mid-1920s, he owned 28 newspapers. Consolidation of ownership of the media became easier with the introduction of broadcasting and even easier with the Internet. This consolidation seems to be increasing political polarization and violence worldwide, threatening democracy itself.

The threat from loss of newspapers

A previous Media & Democracy interview with Arizona State University accounting professor Roger White on "Local newspapers limit malfeasance" describes problems that increase as the quality and quantity of news declines and ownership and control of the media become more highly concentrated: Major media too often deflect the public's attention from political corruption enabled by poor media. This too often contributes to other problems like scapegoating immigrants and attacking Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) while also facilitating increases in pollution, the cost of borrowing, political polarization and violence, and decreases in workplace safety. More on this is included in other interviews in this Media & Democracy series available on Wikiversity under Category:Media reform to improve democracy.

An important quantitative analysis of the problems associated with deficiencies in news is Neff and Pickard (2024). They analyzed data on media funding and democracy in 33 countries. The US has been rated as a "flawed democracy" according to the Economist Democracy Index and spends substantially less per capita on media compared to the world's leading democracies in Scandinavia and Commonweath countries. They note that commercial media focus primarily on people with money, while publicly-funded media try harder to serve everyone. Public funding is more strongly correlated with democracy than private funding. This recommends increasing public funding for media as a means of strengthening democracy. See also "Information is a public good: Designing experiments to improve government".

Discussion

[Interested readers are invite to comment here, subject to the Wikimedia rules of writing from a neutral point of view citing credible sources and treating others with respect.]

Bibliography

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