Uncensored: President speaks without restraint. Same has to be true of the press.

While our support of the president remains steadfast in the hopes he can bring about the resurgence of American industry and economic might that he has promised, we find ourselves struggling to understand his apparent impulse toward censorship.

Take into account all the "Fake News" allegations, the pressure on the NFL to mute player protests, his selective acceptance of questions from media sources he deems worthy and his administration's outlandish treatment of the White House press pool.

No other word best describes Trump's comments Wednesday indicating he has given thought to having NBC's broadcast license pulled because it ran a story he refuted.

"Its frankly disgusting the way the press is able to write whatever they want to write ... " Trump later said. But isn't that the point of the press? To seek out information otherwise denied to the public and to report it, albeit honestly and accurately, so that the citizens of the country can knowingly and in an informed manner decide things like which policies to support, which candidates to vote for, how they want tax dollars to be spent and are they in fact being spent appropriately?

NBC, for the record, is sticking by its sources in reporting that Trump asked if the U.S.  nuclear program could be expanded.  

Now, we might argue that NBC ought to reveal its sources, but in doing so those providing the story might compromise their careers, and that has to be considered, too. Without the whistleblowers and those willing to provide information to the press to vet and to report, there would be far less a check on potential corruption and abuse of political power than there exists with it.

But is it in the purview of the executive office to effectively silence the American media, a pillar of the democracy often referred to as the Fourth Estate, a further and independent check and balance on the powers that be, by pulling its broadcast license?

Should a president impede ---- check that, be permitted to impede ---- the freedom of the press because he does not like it?

Thankfully we don't believe he can or will, the courts would never allow it. But for him to even make the statements ought to be enough to furrow any First Amendment-loving American's brow.

Published in Editorials on October 11, 2017 10:56 PM