Caelin Bragg
Lantern Staff
The rights and freedoms of the press have been hot topic issues ever since President Donald Trump took office, issues that now even democratic candidates are having trouble skirting.
The “fake news” rhetoric popularized by the president has made journalism unsteady for those in it and is now under constant scrutiny by those usually on the right of the political spectrum.
Enter democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke, who held a campaign event at Benedict College in Columbia, South Carolina on Tuesday, Aug. 27. At the event, it’s reported that senior editor for Breitbart, Joel Pollak, was removed from the event by a campus police officer, with a member of the O’Rourke campaign telling him it was because of him being “’disruptive’ at past events” according to the article Pollak wrote for Breitbart following the incident. O’Rourke’s press secretary, Aleigha Cavalier, said “Breitbart News walks the line between being news and a perpetrator of hate speech,” after the incident according to CNN.
I agree that Breitbart shouldn’t be considered a proper news organization (I would say they are, at best, a hate-filled propaganda machine for the alt-right), but who gets to decide which publications are “real news?” We see the dangers of handing those keys to unreliable narrators like President Trump, so, if O’Rourke perchance wins the presidency, can we trust him with those keys when he’s shown he’ll lock the same doors as President Trump?
This is an unfortunate situation where the gray area is not acceptable, and the slippery slope turns into a genuine concern. The New York Times reporters Elizabeth Williamson and Matthew Rosenburg were some of the first to come to the defense of Pollak for this reason on Twitter, and the internet mob reacted predictably in favor of O’Rourke and against those NYT reporters.
After witnessing this reaction, I feel I should make clear that this is in no small or large part a defense of Breitbart, the publication, its reporters or anything they stand for or represent. This is a defense of the freedom of the press to report without fear of oversight or restriction from the government. The O’Rourke campaign later told CNN that “there will be no restricted access to future events” for Breitbart or any other publication, but those words ring hollow after they’ve shown their true colors.
Incidents like this serve as wake up calls that the freedoms of the press are under constant attack across every aisle, and reminders of the politicians in power who cannot be trusted with that freedom. We must be forced to stand shoulder to shoulder with those like Pollak at these events, or risk standing shoulder to shoulder with them while being escorted out.