Democrats Refusing to Give Fox News a Debate Is Not a First Amendment Issue. This is a First Amendment Issue.
We should all be clear on what constitutes a genuine threat to the First Amendment to the Constitution and the values represented by it. This is a genuine threat. From NBC News:
Several people on the list confirmed to NBC News that they had been pulled aside at the border after the date the list was compiled and were told they were being questioned as part of a "national security investigation." CBP told NBC News the names on the list are people who were present during violence that broke out at the border with Tijuana in November and they were being questioned so that the agency could learn more about what started it.
The list, dated Jan. 9, 2019, is titled "San Diego Sector Foreign Operations Branch: Migrant Caravan FY-2019 Suspected Organizers, Coordinators, Instigators, and Media" and includes pictures of the 59 individuals who are to be stopped. The people on the list were to be pulled aside by Customs and Border Protection agents for questioning when they crossed the U.S.-Mexico border to meet with or aid migrants from the Honduran caravan waiting on the Mexican side of the border.
The list includes 10 journalists, seven of them U.S. citizens, a U.S.-based attorney and others labeled as organizers and "instigators," 31 of whom are American. Symbols on the list show that by the time it was compiled 12 of the individuals had already been through additional questioning during border crossings and nine had been arrested.
Governments compiling lists is rarely a good thing, and I wouldn't trust this administration* to make out a grocery list.
Now, the below is not a threat to the First Amendment and the values represented by it, and anyone who implies that it is should be laughed out of the profession. From The New York Times:
Fox News, which devotes its prime-time hours to pro-Trump commentary, was seen in broadcast circles as a long shot to sponsor a gathering of Democratic candidates. But the network had made an aggressive pitch to party officials, noting, for instance, that the “Fox News Sunday” anchor, Chris Wallace, had won plaudits after moderating the third general election debate in 2016.
“We hope the D.N.C. will reconsider its decision to bar Chris Wallace, Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, all of whom embody the ultimate journalistic integrity and professionalism, from moderating a Democratic presidential debate,” Bill Sammon, managing editor of Fox News’s Washington bureau, said in a statement. “They offer candidates an important opportunity to make their case to the largest TV news audience in America, which includes many persuadable voters.”
For years now, many members of the elite political media have indulged in the quiet fiction that FNC is merely an overly enthusiastic but conventional news operation that happens to have a conservative bent to it, as well as indulging themselves in the quiet fiction that the news operation is somehow separate from the wild kingdom that exists on the network during primetime. This was always more than half-nonsense. Now, though, as illustrated by Jane Mayer’s burial job in The New Yorker, the paradigm has shifted to the extent that any serious journalists making that argument do so to their own embarrassment. After all, it wasn’t Sean Hannity who decided to kill the Stormy Daniels story, as Mayer reports, it was the folks running the news division.
It should not be necessary to say this, but there is no First Amendment right to host a presidential debate, and the marketplace of ideas is not harmed if that debate occurs on CNN. I share a relatively high opinion of the Fox TV stars that Sammon mentions, although I note that Shep Smith is left off the list in favor of Bret Baier. I’m sure they have many friends and admirers among the employees at other outlets who are expressing shock at the Democratic National Committee’s outrage against Beltway politesse. Tough. Your pals are complicit. Deal with it.
Perhaps the silliest argument being made seriously is the notion that the DNC is afraid to have its candidates appear before the withering interrogation of, say, Martha McCallum-and, if they won’t face down Chris Wallace, how will they deal with Putin or Kim Jong-un? First of all, what the DNC is doing is not that unusual in the logistics of political debates. In 2016, the president* refused to participate in a Fox News debate in Des Moines, concocting a phony event at which he expressed support for Our Beautiful Vets … and then, of course, he stiffed them on some of the proceeds.
Courage has got nothing to do with it. The paradigm has changed completely. As Mayer makes clear, the Fox News Channel is now the propaganda arm of what increasingly looks like a criminal conspiracy masquerading as a presidency. The DNC has no sacred obligation to contribute to that grim farce. The only mistake the DNC made was considering the idea in the first place.
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