What a great time of year, spring is arriving and baseball’s back. Donald Trump is also back and doing — well, Trumpian things. He recently planted the seeds for his administration to control the information ecosystem by handpicking which reporters get assigned to the presidential press pool when he travels. It’s a century long tradition that the White House Correspondents’ Association uses to rotate which reporters are granted access to the president; especially when confined to small areas such as Air Force One or the Oval Office.
To defend the move, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “A select group of DC-based journalists should no longer have a monopoly of press access at the White House.” Leaving the decision up to the president will “give the power back to the people” she told reporters. In response Jacqui Henrich, Fox’s senior White House correspondent, wrote on X “This move does not give the power back to the people — it gives power to the White House.”
Throughout history, chief executives have attempted to control where their message is concentrated and how it should be circulated. President John Adams understood the importance of steering the media. In 1798, Adam’s Federalists party, supportive of a strong central government, clashed with Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans who advocated for more power to the states. Federalists accused Jeffersonians of being too chummy with France and stoking fires of a French invasion.
Fear and suspicion led to the Alien Sedition Acts passed by Congress that same year. The acts were a series of laws that placed restrictions on foreign residents’ freedom of speech and the press, when it was critical of the president or the government.
Decades later, when the U.S. entered World War I in 1917, Democrat Woodrow Wilson looked to silence any opposition to the war effort. Promoting loyalty to America and stifling anti-war speeches and written pamphlets led to the passing of the Espionage Act of 1917 and Sedition Act of 1918. The Sedition Act criminalized any “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” about the U.S. government or military.
Wilson believed that disloyalty to the war effort “must be crushed out” and that disloyal individuals had “sacrificed their right to civil liberties” like free speech and expression. The Supreme Court declared the acts constitutional as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes compared opposition to war to shouting “fire” in a crowded theater.
Other presidents, used similar strategies to quell dissent, further their agenda or fit a narrative that sometimes blurred the lines of what was actually true.
President Trump, in the beginning months of his second term, has demonstrated a no-holds-barred approach. As journalists scramble to keep up with the onslaught of executive orders, President Trump continues to bluster that independent media is “truly the enemy of the people” threatening and demeaning reporters. The attempt to normalize his actions seem to be working as news outlets are now starting to self-censor in a sign of deference.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt also feuded with mainstream media. Like Trump, he blamed newspaper publishers of telling reporters what to write, complaining it was “poisonous propaganda.” FDR also utilized the budding sprigs of radio to serve as a direct pipeline to the people with his “fireside chats.” These scripted, direct talks to America, written and stylized by policy advisers were a calming method of communicating to the nation during two major crises: The Great Depression and World War II.
President Richard Nixon, however decided the press hated him; made a list of press “enemies.” But it was the New York Times that turned his paranoia into legal action. The newspaper published a 1945 to 1967 classified Department of Defense study on Vietnam — the Pentagon Papers. In Nixon’s eyes, this was a radical, left-wing conspiracy by government and mainstream media looking to sabotage his administration. In 1971, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the government failed to prove harm to national security, and publication of the papers was justified. Victory free speech.
But questions remain; what happens when free speech conflicts with the Constitution? And should speech be limited in order to protect the rights of others?
Since baseball is right around the corner, and as Alexander Pope wrote, “Hope springs eternal in the human breast;Man never Is, but always To be blest.” — it’s batter up Supreme Court and Congress — you’re on deck.
John Schmoyer is a retired U.S. history/American government teacher and department chair at Northwestern Lehigh School District.
