New York Times subpoenas raise press freedom concerns | BBC News

[00:00:00]The US Justice Department is facing backlash from press freedom groups after the New York Times revealed that the government secretly asked for the phone records of several of its journalists.

[00:00:11]Now, the Times reports that a newly unsealed legal filing shows that federal prosecutors targeted the communication logs of multiple investigative reporters as well as members of their immediate families. The move was reportedly a part of an aggressive attempt to hunt down anonymous sources behind high-level national security leaks. Now, this comes after the Department of Justice sparked push back earlier this month when it issued subpoenas against Times journalists who reported on the new luxury Air Force One jet donated by Qatar.

[00:00:45]Well, let's talk more about this now.

[00:00:46]I'm joined tonight by the CEO of the Committee to Protect Journalists, Jodi Ginsburg. Good to have you back on the program, Jody. Um, so just run us through this then. The Trump administration reportedly seeking phone records of New York Times journalists as well as their family members uh over the new Air Force One. Your reaction to that? Well, it marks frankly a new low from an administration that has shown repeatedly its contempt not just for journalists and journalism, but the public's right to know. The seeking of these types of grand jury subpoenas is extraordinarily rare. We're aware of perhaps three in the last 25 years. And what we're seeing from this administration is this increased use of legal threats, these kinds of subpoenas, regulatory threats, and and so on to try to stifle reporting, legitimate public interest reporting on the government, the administration, and how it's spending the public's money.

[00:01:49]>> You mentioned their um public interest in all of this. The argument that has been put forward from the Department of Justice, for example, is that this pertains to national security. You know, are there national security concerns here about this reporting that would warrant the administration doing this?

[00:02:08]>> Well, thus far, the Department of Justice has provided no evidence to support its claims that this is a national security risk. And remember that they're going after the reporters.

[00:02:20]Reporters rely on confidential sources to be able to report on things that governments the world over would rather conceal from the public. It's really important. And by going after journalists in this way rather than the sources of the leak, you deter people from sharing public interest information.

[00:02:39]>> Yeah. And just tell us more about that because the parliament of justice has said, look, reporters aren't targets in all of this. uh that it's specifically the people who are leaking the classified information and that they uh respect the role that the press plays.

[00:02:54]But there's also, you know, the issue that's been raised about how this has been dealt with, the fact that reporters have been waking up with federal agents, for example, delivering subpoenas at their door. You know, just talk to us about, you know, the impact that has on on press freedom. Well, the Department of Justice may claim that the the targets are not journalists, but the evidence says something very different.

[00:03:16]We've had agents turn up at the doors of journalists. Of course, earlier this year, we had the FBI turn up at the door of the Washington Post reporter Hannah Nathansson. Similarly, seeking information, taking away her computer and her phones. These are all actions intended to control the narrative by the government and the administration about what it's doing. And just kind of broadening this out, I think you mentioned at the beginning of this conversation that there is a record of this happening three times in the last 25 years. So comparing this internationally, how does this compare to other countries? Well, unfortunately, the kinds of things that we've seen from this administration, the legal threats, the defamation cases against the likes of ABC and CBS, the demeaning and degrading of journalists at uh press conferences and so on, the increased use of regulation to punish news outlets that the administration doesn't like.

[00:04:15]These are all the hallmarks that we see over our 40 years of doing this work at the committee to protect journalists from authoritarian regimes. And in fact, Maria Resa, the Nobel laurate, the journalist and Nobel laurate, uh, says that what she experiences here in the United States is similar to what she experienced in the Philippines over the course of 10 years. And of course, she was threatened with up to 100 years in jail, uh, but happening at warp speed in just the space of two years. And Jody, I do want to ask you in light of all of this, when you speak to journalists from various outlets, do you think this is having an impact on how they do their work?

[00:04:53]>> I think it's absolutely having an impact. If you think of this coupled with the introduction of restrictions on visas that foreign journalists can get, the kinds of raids we've seen from ICE, from immigration against foreign journalists, all of that has a chilling effect. And the important thing to remember is big news outlets have the capacity to fight back against this.

[00:05:14]They have their own in-house legal teams. They have many of them deep pockets. But this has a knock-on effect.

[00:05:20]It's not just in the administration that we're seeing this. We're seeing these kinds of tactics being used at state and local level as well where smaller news outlets, independent news outlets, simply don't have the resource to fight back and may choose not to do this kind of important public interest journalism for fear that they might be bankrupted by legal cases and other kinds of threats. Jod Ginsburgg, CEO of the Committee to Protect Journalists. Thank you for being with us.