Americans have a deeply complicated relationship with press freedom—one that can’t be reduced to a simple “for it” or “against it” mindset. On one hand, an overwhelming 73% of U.S. adults say freedom of the press is “very” or “extremely” important to the well-being of society, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center and the Pew-Knight Initiative. That’s about as close to consensus as anything can be in today’s divided political climate. Majorities of both Democrats and Republicans agree on this broad principle, though Democrats are significantly more likely to say it’s essential. But then comes the twist. When you move beyond the principle and get into real-world situations, Americans start to hedge. Majorities on both sides don’t always stand firmly behind press freedom in practice. More than half of Americans—including 59% of Republicans and 45% of Democrats—say it’s acceptable for the government to demand that a news organization remove a story if the story contains false information. And when it comes to a story that could pose a risk to national security, 60% of Americans, including 72% of Republicans and 50% of Democrats, say the same. It’s a reminder that while Americans love the First Amendment in the abstract, many also believe there are lines journalists shouldn’t cross—and they’re not always sure the press can be trusted to respect those lines on its own.
Peter Loge, the director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University, says this tension is not new, and in some ways it’s understandable. Most Americans recognize that the same legal protections that allow for robust political coverage also protect speech that can be careless, misleading, or harmful. He compares it to the classic legal example: you can’t falsely yell “fire” in a crowded theater and cause a panic. Similarly, he says, most people can agree that there are some national security secrets that shouldn’t be published, or at least shouldn’t be published in the heat of the moment. Journalists, he points out, have ethical codes that ask them to avoid causing harm, to tell the truth, and to be fair. They’re not supposed to just publish anything that crosses their desks. But here’s where Loge draws a bright line. He may not love the idea of journalists policing themselves—he knows the media isn’t perfect and that journalists make mistakes—but he absolutely rejects the idea that the government should be the one doing the policing. “I may not love all journalists policing themselves,” Loge said. “I really loathe the government trying to police journalists.” That distinction, between ethical self-restraint and government-imposed control, is at the heart of the free press debate. Americans seem to understand the difference too, even if they don’t always agree on which specific journalistic decisions deserve protection.
The deep partisan divide doesn’t just show up in questions about censorship; it also shows up in how Americans view the overall health of press freedom in the Trump era. When asked whether the press has become less free during the second Trump administration, more than four in ten Americans say it has. That number is staggeringly lopsided along party lines: 72% of Democrats say press freedom has declined, while only 15% of Republicans agree. That’s not surprising, given how central the media has become in American political culture. But Loge warns that the former president’s rhetoric toward journalists has real consequences. President Donald Trump has spent years describing many mainstream reporters as enemies of the American people—usually, Loge notes, when those reporters are publishing information the president doesn’t like. There’s a massive difference between saying, “I disagree with that report” and telling the public that the press is an enemy of the people. Loge says the first is normal democratic jousting. The second is something else entirely. “That’s remarkably dangerous,” he said. He makes the point that a president’s job is not to silence the press but to take part in the same open debate as everyone else. Presidents should criticize coverage when they think it’s wrong. They should push back, correct the record, and make their case to the American people. But they should always defend the existence of a robust and independent press, because our democracy depends on it. When a leader uses the language of enemies against journalists, it delegitimizes the very institution that exists to hold power accountable.
The reasons voters on both sides care about press freedom may be different. According to the Pew Research Center, Democrats and Republicans are looking at different parts of the same problem. Democrats tend to focus on government itself, fearing restrictions, censorship, and direct interference by political leaders in what news organizations are allowed to report. Their worries run along the lines of: What if the government uses “national security” to hide corruption? What if a president targets specific outlets or journalists because they wrote something critical? Those are the kinds of threats that keep defenders of the press up at night. Republicans, on the other hand, are more likely to frame their concerns around issues of truth and information. They worry about false information in the media and the power news organizations have to control what stories people see, who gets heard, and which narratives gain traction. They see bias in large newsrooms and express concern that a handful of companies and editors have too much power over the national conversation. Both sides say they support press freedom, but this is really an argument about what puts press freedom most at risk—government control on one side, or the influence of media institutions on the other. Overall, only 28% of Americans say the news media is completely free to report the news today. And 46% say they are extremely or very worried about potential restrictions on press freedom in the future. Again, those worries are not evenly distributed. Democrats are significantly more concerned about press restrictions than Republicans, probably because they see the current threat as coming from the White House.
But the survey looked at more than far-off principles and partisan perceptions. It also asked Americans about specific actions the government might take in relation to the press, and the answers show just how mixed American feelings really are. Around 30% of Americans say it’s at least sometimes acceptable for the government to force journalists to reveal the identities of unnamed government sources. That’s a serious shock to press freedom, because anonymous sourcing is the foundation of some of the most important journalism—whistleblower stories, national security exposés, and investigations into corruption. If a journalist can be forced to reveal a source, then that source might never speak again, and the public loses access to information that powerful people want to hide. Similarly, about 30% of Americans say it’s at least sometimes acceptable for the government to take away a news organization’s license to broadcast. That would effectively be a death sentence for a news outlet—the government doesn’t have the power to shut down a newspaper, but broadcast licenses are different. The fact that three in ten Americans would be comfortable with the government revoking a broadcaster’s license is a sign of how much distrust exists. At the same time, around 80% of Americans say the government intentionally keeps important news from reaching the public at least some of the time. But here’s the kicker: a similar share says the same about news organizations. In other words, Americans don’t trust the government to tell the truth, but they don’t trust the media to tell the truth either. They’re stuck between two powerful institutions they believe are both capable of hiding the truth. That creates a strange kind of cynicism, where people suspect the media can’t be fully free because the government is manipulating it, and can’t be fully trusted because news organizations have their own agendas. It’s a feedback loop of distrust, and it eats away at the foundations of democratic accountability.
In the end, Loge argues that press freedom isn’t just about protecting journalist’s rights or preserving a constitutional principle. It’s about the fundamental question of what kind of democracy Americans want to live in. He points out that democracy is, by definition, an ongoing and sometimes messy debate about what to do next. Decisions about public health, foreign policy, taxes, national security, criminal justice—these are all matters that Americans have to figure out together. And the only way to have an honest debate is to have all the perspectives on the table, including the perspectives people don’t want to hear. That means protecting the right of journalists to ask uncomfortable questions, investigate powerful people, and publish stories that officials would rather keep quiet. It also means tolerating journalism that is sometimes imperfect, sometimes biased, and sometimes just plain wrong. That’s the deal the Founders made when they wrote the First Amendment. They didn’t give the press special protections because journalists are better than the rest of us, or because they can’t be wrong. They gave the press those protections because they knew that power must be watched—constantly, skeptically, and publicly. If the government decides what is true and what is false, what can be published and what cannot, then freedom of the press is just another election promise, dependent on who is in office at the time. An independent press isn’t a luxury. It’s a necessity for a government of the people. When the press loses its freedom, the American people lose their ability to make informed decisions. And when that happens, the debate that Loge talks about—the one that makes democracy possible—comes to an end.