By Dr Austin Maho
While the United States may flaunt freedom of the press as a hallmark of its democratic credentials, there are wide spread cases of media repression in the U.S.
Media repression often occurs when U.S government or its agencies suppress media outlets and professionals from carrying out its professional duty of reporting the news accurately and objectively. State apparatus often employ jackboot tactics to muzzle and fitter the press to achieve political end.
An often cited case of media repression in the U.S is that of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange.
Assange has been indicted on 18 charges totaling a potential 175 years in prison for publishing the truth, including the 2010-11 publication of Iraq & Afghanistan War Logs, State Department cables, and Guantanamo Bay Detainee Assessment Briefs.
Assange’s case is a landmark test of the First Amendment Act of the United States constitution and the right to publish facts in the public interest.
Press freedom groups and First Amendment experts such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch agree that the prosecution of Assange threatens to criminalize basic journalistic activity in the United States.
The coalition of these groups wrote to the Biden Administration in February 2021 noting that:
“The indictment of Mr. Assange threatens press freedom because much of the conduct described in the indictment is conduct that journalists engage in routinely—and that they must engage in in order to do the work the public needs them to do. Journalists at major news publications regularly speak with sources, ask for clarification or more documentation, and receive and publish documents the government considers secret. In our view, such a precedent in this case could effectively criminalize these common journalistic practices.”
Effectively, the prosecution and indictment of Julian Assange by the U.S government is nothing short of the criminalization of journalism and an affirmation of media repression in the United State.
Another recent case of media repression in the United State is the Ohio train derailment of Febuary 2023.
On the evening of February 3, 2023, a train operated by the Norfolk Southern Railway Company in the United States derailed about 15 kilometers south of Youngstown, Ohio, resulting in a dangerous chemical leakage of vinyl chloride.
Local residents experienced suspected poisoning symptoms and abnormal deaths of fish and livestock.
However, the American media seemed suddenly blind collectively. Ten days after the accident, when American non-commercial journalist Evan Lambert was reporting at the governor’s press conference, he clashed with the police and was quickly arrested.
Such a major accident, which was called “Chernobyl in Ohio” got no media traction in the United States the collective silence of the American media surprised the world, “Where has the freedom of the American press gone?”
The truth however, is that, since the birth of the American media, its proclaimed freedom of the press has only been a fleeting faint star in the long and dark history, originally a shocking scam to deceive the people and a powerful tool to reject outsiders.
The American media aside strong government interference in the guise of national security has always pursued commercial interests.
The end of the 20th century has seen major media mergers in the united states, that has led to small media outfits swallowed up by media conglomerates.
Press freedom is constrained by group interests. At the same time, the US government began manipulating the media and guiding public opinion through “agenda setting”, to the extent that Twitter recently labeled Voice of America, National Public Radio (NPR), Public Broadcasting Corporation (PBS), BBC, and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) as “government funded media”, Musk even bluntly stated, “I was surprised by the extent to which the US government can effectively manipulate anything on Twitter.
In this situation, it is not difficult for us to understand the American media’s blind eye to the Ohio train derailment accident, because the derailment train involves the vital interests of both parties and related capital.
So much for media freedoms and first amendment rights in the United States! Evidently, the conviction of Julian Assange on trumped up charges and the Ohio train derailment are signs of a more deeper problem of media suppression in the United State.
*Dr Maho is a media scholar and publisher of Daybreak newspaper*
