Trump’s UN ambassador defends press ban as news outlets prepare legal challenges

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First Amendment groups on Sunday rallied around the three news outlets banned by President Donald Trump, while one of the president’s appointees tried to defend the restriction.

CNN, MS NOW and Politico are preparing to take legal action, and many legal experts say they will prevail in court.

But Mike Waltz, Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, argued otherwise in an appearance on CNN Sunday morning. Waltz was booked on CNN’s “State of the Union” before the ban was implemented.

“The president is absolutely within his rights to limit journalists to government facilities, particularly when, in his opinion, they’re not behaving as good-faith journalists. And that’s just not his opinion. That’s the Supreme Court’s opinion,” Waltz told anchor Dana Bash.

Waltz cited a 1965 Supreme Court ruling, Zemel v. Rusk, in which Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote that “the right to speak and publish does not carry with it the unrestrained right to gather information.”

But the current dispute centers on a First Amendment legal concept known as “viewpoint discrimination,” since Trump has been explicit about his reasons for wanting to ban certain outlets over coverage he deems “negative.”

“Now, if they want to write them, that’s fine,” he said Friday in the Oval Office. “But I don’t have to let them into my — into the people’s house.”

A wide array of reporters have been welcomed onto the White House grounds for many decades. Trump’s restrictions are unprecedented.

“The First Amendment does not permit the government to pick and choose which journalists are allowed to do their jobs,” National Press Club President Mark Schoeff Jr. said.

Essentially, courts have ruled that if the White House decides to let in some reporters, then it can’t block others for the reasons Trump has cited.

Last year, when Trump briefly banned The Associated Press from some events, a Trump-appointed judge in Washington wrote that “when the White House opens its facilities to the press generally, as it does in the Brady Briefing Room, it cannot exclude journalists based on viewpoint.”

Thus, press freedom advocates say they are confident the courts will strike down the current ban.

“There’s going to be, in the next few days and probably by first thing Monday morning, filings by these outlets and their legal representation to demand an injunction from a court or hopefully even a temporary restraining order, which would move even faster, insisting that the pool move forward as it normally does,” Adam Rose, the deputy director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said on CNN earlier Sunday.

Conor Fitzpatrick, chief supervising attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, warned on ABC’s “This Week” that the ban could set a precedent for censorship under future administrations.

“Once you open the Pandora’s box of censorship, you can never close it again,” he said.

Editors of other major newsrooms are well aware that Trump may try to ban their reporters next.

Partly for that reason, news outlets that fiercely compete with CNN, MS NOW and Politico on every other front have shown unusual solidarity.

The Washington Post said in a statement Saturday that the ban is “a clear form of intimidation to silence coverage, stripping the public of information and threatening our democracy.”

Fox News also showed concern about the ban on Sunday by devoting time to the subject on “Fox News Sunday,” its weekly public affairs program.

Jacqui Heinrich, who was filling in as anchor, serves as this year’s president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, and on Saturday the association said Trump’s action “violates the First Amendment.”

On Sunday, Heinrich interviewed her predecessor, Weijia Jiang of CBS, who led the association for the past year.

“It is an absolute privilege to cover the White House and the president, and we don’t take that for granted,” Jiang said. “But when you start selecting who’s allowed to do that, the viewpoint shrinks, and it doesn’t represent, you know, the public.”

“And that’s what makes America so amazing,” she said, “the best country in the world, that we can have these differing viewpoints, that we can disagree, that we can bring different perspectives and different reporting to the table and allow people who are watching it and reading it decide for themselves. And so that’s why it matters so much.”

Christian Sierra, Jordan Budney and Auzinea Bacon contributed reporting.

安娜·莫尼梅克/盖蒂图片社

周日，拥护宪法第一修正案的团体声援被唐纳德·特朗普总统禁播的三家新闻媒体，而总统的一名任命官员则试图为这项限制辩护。

CNN、MS NOW 和 Politico 正准备采取法律行动，许多法律专家表示他们将在法庭上胜诉。

但特朗普驻联合国大使迈克·沃尔兹周日上午在CNN节目中却持不同意见。沃尔兹原定在禁令实施前参加CNN的“国情咨文”节目。

“总统完全有权限制记者只能在政府设施内活动，尤其是在他认为记者没有尽到记者应尽的义务时。这不仅仅是他个人的看法，也是最高法院的看法，”沃尔兹告诉主持人达娜·巴什。

沃尔兹引用了 1965 年最高法院的一项裁决，即泽梅尔诉拉斯克案，首席大法官厄尔·沃伦在其中写道：“言论和出版的权利并不附带不受限制地收集信息的权利。”

但目前的争议焦点在于第一修正案中的一项法律概念，即“观点歧视”，因为特朗普已经明确表示，他想禁止某些媒体进行他认为“负面”的报道。

“如果他们想写信，那没问题，”他周五在椭圆形办公室说。“但我没有义务让他们进入我的——进入人民的殿堂。”

几十年来，白宫一直欢迎各色记者进入。特朗普的限制措施史无前例。

“第一修正案不允许政府挑选哪些记者可以履行职责，”全国新闻俱乐部主席马克·舍夫二世说。

法院实际上已经裁定，如果白宫决定允许一些记者进入，那么就不能以特朗普所列举的理由阻止其他记者进入。

去年，当特朗普短暂禁止美联社参加某些活动时，华盛顿一位由特朗普任命的法官写道：“当白宫像在布雷迪新闻发布室那样向媒体普遍开放其设施时，它不能基于观点将记者排除在外。”

因此，新闻自由倡导者表示，他们相信法院会推翻目前的禁令。

“未来几天，可能最迟周一早上，这些媒体及其法律代表就会提交文件，要求法院颁布禁令，或者希望能够颁布临时限制令，这样进展会更快，从而坚持要求媒体联盟像往常一样继续进行报道，”新闻自由基金会副倡导主任亚当·罗斯周日早些时候在 CNN 上表示。

个人权利与表达基金会首席主管律师康纳·菲茨帕特里克在ABC电视台的“本周”节目中警告说，这项禁令可能会为未来政府的审查制度树立先例。

他说：“一旦你打开了审查制度的潘多拉魔盒，就再也关不上了。”

其他主要新闻机构的编辑们都清楚，特朗普下一步可能会试图禁止他们的记者入境。

部分原因就在于此，在其他各个方面都与 CNN、MS NOW 和 Politico 激烈竞争的新闻媒体表现出了不同寻常的团结。

《华盛顿邮报》周六发表声明称，这项禁令“显然是一种恐吓手段，旨在压制报道，剥夺公众获取信息的权利，并威胁我们的民主”。

福克斯新闻也在周日表达了对这项禁令的关注，在其每周播出的公共事务节目“福克斯周日新闻”中专门用时间讨论了这一话题。

担任代班主播的杰奎·海因里希是今年的白宫记者协会主席，该协会周六表示，特朗普的行为“违反了第一修正案”。

周日，海因里希采访了她的前任，哥伦比亚广播公司（CBS）的魏佳江，她在过去一年里领导了该协会。

“能够报道白宫和总统绝对是一种荣幸，我们对此心怀感激，”江说。“但是，当你开始选择谁可以报道时，视角就会缩小，也就无法代表公众了。”

“而这正是美国如此令人惊叹的地方，”她说，“美国是世界上最好的国家，我们可以拥有不同的观点，我们可以意见相左，我们可以提出不同的视角和报道，让观看和阅读的人自己做出判断。所以，这才是它如此重要的原因。”

Christian Sierra、Jordan Budney 和 Auzinea Bacon 对报道亦有贡献。