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- This is One-On-One.

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(upbeat music) - Hi, everyone.

Steve Adubato, For the next half hour, a compelling, important discussion about free speech, it's in the Constitution, freedom of the Press, in the Constitution.

The author we have to talk about it, an expert on it, understands these issues well, is David Enrich, "New York Times" bestselling author of a book called "Dark Towers."

But this book is called "Murder the Truth: Fear, the First Amendment, and a Secret Campaign to Protect the Powerful."

David, great to have you with us.

- Thanks for having me.

- You got it.

The premise of the book, "Murder the Truth," first of all, where the heck does that title come from, and how is it relevant to the times we're living in in 2025 and beyond?

- Yeah, it's actually a quote that I borrowed from a British lawmaker who is appalled by how his country's free speech laws were kind of being weaponized against journalists and other people who spoke truth to power.

And when I read it, it just really struck me of how applicable it is to the times we're living in, where there's just this constant barrage of threats against journalists and really anyone else who has the desire and appetite to speak publicly about what they perceive as wrongdoing or threats to their democracy.

- Okay, let's play this out.

We're on public television right now.

We're partners with the public television community.

Should I be concerned?

Should we be concerned for those of us who are putting programming on the air, having meaningful dialogue about public policy and questioning as we do with the New Jersey state government, state governmental leaders and the federal government, federal government leaders particularly that impact those in the Northeast and New Jersey and New York area?

Should we be worried, concerned about having this conversation, David?

- Well, I don't think we need to worry about this conversation in particular, but I definitely do think people should be very worried about the efforts that are being made right now to constrain free speech and that comes in many different forms.

And obviously, with public television and public radio in this country, there is a concerted effort by the Republican Party and by the White House to cut off government funding for those programs because of what they perceive as liberal bias.

But I think much more broadly what's happening is that there is a very well organized and increasingly successful movement afoot that seeks to impose very severe penalties on people or institutions that say things or write things or publish things that cut against the interests of powerful people.

And you see that whether it is a journalist that is getting sued for defamation or someone who's protesting government policies on a university campus and in some cases, gets, you know, thrown in jail or deported.

And so I think there's a wide range of threats right now to free speech.

I do think that people should be very concerned about that.

we've been doing a series for several years now called "Democracy in Danger," how what David Enrich argues in his book is, in fact, putting our representative democracy, our Republic, in very serious danger.

- So interesting, in reading the book, I learned about this case, New York Times versus Sullivan, The New York Times versus Sullivan case, a free speech case, 1964.

We won't get too deep into the weeds, folks, but I want you to understand this from David Enrich's perspective.

This case, 1964, it has to do with libel law in the United States.

What was established by the courts at that time as it relates to libel, and how has that changed over the past 60 years?

- Yeah, so in a nutshell, this case, it involves defamation, which means either writing or saying something that is false and that injures someone's reputation.

And in this case, in 1964, the Supreme Court, we don't go into all the details of the case, but the Supreme Court ruled that if you are a public figure or a public official, so basically someone who holds power in your community or in the country as a whole, in order to win a defamation case, you need to not only prove that someone said something that was false and damaged their reputation, but you also need to go a bit further than that and prove that whoever uttered that defamatory falsehood did so either knowing that what they were saying was false, so in other words, they were lying, or they acted with reckless disregard for the truth.

And that created a much higher bar for these kinds of lawsuits to prevail in court, and the Supreme Court created that high bar for a reason, which was that- - How's the bar been lowered?

Well, you know, the bar has been lowered in part because there are a lot of people out there right now trying to overturn this decision to make it easier for powerful people to- - Be more specific, David.

Who's tried to overturn New York Times versus Sullivan?

Who's trying to do that?

- Well, there are quite a few people, and it ranges from President Trump to people like casino mogul Steve Wynn or Constitutional lawyer Alan Dershowitz to two members, at least two justices, on the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, to a whole constellation of conservative thinktanks, interest groups, academics, not to mention quite a few lawyers and judges around the country that are below the level of the Supreme Court.

- To what end, David?

- Well, it depends on who you ask, I guess.

And from my perspective, what's happening is that this is an effort to make it easier for powerful people to either win cases against the media or more important, I think, to threaten them and to make it harder and less desirable to win these cases.

I think from their perspective, they would argue that, you know, it is the media gets things wrong sometimes, and sometimes ends up - They do.

- damaging people's reputations.

We do, 100%, we do, and that is a totally valid criticism.

And frankly, I think the media could be, look, there's a whole crisis right now with a lack of trust in the mainstream media, and I think that that is something- - Excuse me, often with good reason.

Later on today we're taping an interview with an author who wrote a very comprehensive book, not the Jake Tapper book, but another important book about the alleged coverup, not just by many Democrats to hide what was going on and we're taping this program in late May.

We just found out about President Biden's cancer diagnosis.

But even beyond that, well, many Democrats, and you know this, have been accused, legitimately been accused, of hiding, protecting the real situation of the President.

Where was the media?

Isn't it legitimate for people to question where we were during that, and why we weren't pressing those issues harder, David?

- Yeah, well, look, I think you can find a lot of counter examples of that.

And "The Wall Street Journal," for example, did a huge story before the fateful presidential debate that pulled back the cover in a lot of this, one of the authors of the new book that's out now.

Alex Thompson at Axios wrote a lot about this.

I think "The New York Times" wrote some about this, but in general, yeah, I don't think the news media in general did a very good job of pulling back- - The distrust on the part of the media, how's it come back to murdering the truth?

- Well, look, I think, before I even answer that question, I think the important thing to note is that I spent two years, plus or minus, working on this book and researching these cases.

And what I saw over and over again was that the vast overwhelming majority of the lawsuits that are out there and the vast majority of the efforts to overturn New York Times versus Sullivan to make it easier to sue the media is not about cases where the media got things wrong or damaged someone's reputation.

It is about things that are accurate or at least are in the vicinity of accuracy but that offend or harm the interests of rich and powerful people.

So this is not a case or a situation where people who have been seriously damaged by inaccuracies in the media are struggling to kind get their day in court.

This is a situation because people like that, there are tons of successful defamation cases out there right now.

You can look at them, right?

CNN was just successfully sued.

ABC News was successfully sued.

Fox News has been successfully sued.

And that's just three off the top of my head sitting here right now.

There is- - Fox News and the Dominion case with the voting machines.

- Yeah, yeah, but also ABC news, CNN, and this is not a kind of a political thing.

This is something that happens across the political spectrum.

- Let me ask you this.

So in some ways, it's not new, and I'll be more specific because you write about this in the book, which I found fascinating.

So attacking the media, right, which has very much to do with, as I said, freedom of the press in the Constitution, back in 1969, Spiro Agnew, who was Vice President at the time, talked about quote, "media elites," right, and attacked the media.

How is this different than what Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, and many others were doing as it relates to the media part?

We'll talk beyond the media in just a second.

But how is this different?

- Well, first of all, I think that it is different.

But this was a continuum that did then, and look, this has been going on way before the Nixon administration also, and the, the founders of the country really got frustrated with the media quite a lot, and nonetheless thought that the First Amendment should be the First Amendment, you know?

But I think what one of the things that's happened since the 1960s is that you have a Republican party and a President that are engaging in rhetoric that is much more incendiary than what even Nixon and Spiro Agnew were using.

And aside from the rhetoric, you have tactics that have really amped up.

I mean, you have the White House just recently trying to control which journalists and which news organizations get a seat in the briefing room or that travel with the president.

You have the sitting President of the United States filing lawsuits and threatening lawsuits against news outlets when they don't like coverage.

You have all sorts of legal actions afoot in the administration trying to investigate news outlets and TV networks that air reports that the President doesn't like.

And just recently have seen with CBS News and "60 Minutes," the President does not like what they have been airing about him, and so they waged this kind of all-out legal onslaught against him, and that that's just not something that we've seen in the past in this country.

- I understand, David, and you make a compelling case, but every reference you've made about attacking the truth, attacking the media's right and responsibility to report the truth to even when we get things wrong, that our intent is to find out what's really going on and share it with the public.

Don't you believe on some level, it was, quote, "murdering the truth" when, in fact, President Biden, and it's difficult to talk about this as he is, again, when we're taping this program in late May, been diagnosed with cancer, but the reality is, if he's got a list of questions, he's got a list of questions, and they're written down with the name of the person who's supposed to ask the question, and he only calls on those who he knows they're gonna ask the question that he is prepared for, is that not, was that not, should we not be concerned about that, quote, "murdering the truth?"

Because everyone you mentioned is a Republican.

- Both things can be true at the same time.

I mean, I'm not sitting here.

- Absolutely.

- Surely I'm not defending the Biden Administration, which, like, for all of its like, you know, for all the sins of the Trump Administration, was also very tough on journalists, gave very little access to journalists, and was actively deceiving journalists at various points.

That's something that administrations of both parties do and have done, and I'm sure will continue to do.

And it's the media's job, which we do not always do well, but it's the media's job to pull back the curtains on that and get past the untruths and the lies and the spin emanating from people that are in positions of power, most of all the president.

And to me, this isn't a question, at least what I've been focusing on, look, it's not a question whether the media always does its jobs right or does its jobs well.

We definitely do not, but this is a question about whether Americans, whether they're journalists or just normal citizens or activists, someone who wants to circulate an online petition about, like, a real estate development in their community, or even wants to leave, like, a negative review about a restaurant they went to on Yelp.

Because of New York Times versus Sullivan, you are allowed to write negative things about people or restaurants or groups in your community that hold power, and you do not need to worry that if you make an innocent mistake, if you would, like accidentally screw up a fact or something that that subjects you to legal liability.

That's what the Sullivan decision did.

It protected you.

It protected the right of people to make innocent mistakes in the course of a vigorous public debate without risk of getting sued.

And it's that standard, that safeguard, that a lot of people right now are trying to roll back.

And from my perspective, that is really profoundly dangerous for a lot of the rights that we, as journalists, but more broadly, as American citizens, have taken for granted for the past 250 years.

And I think it's really important that people understand that.

- We're talking with David Enrich, New York Times bestselling book, is called "Dark Towers."

This book that we're talking about is called "Murder the Truth: Fear, the First Amendment, and a Secret Campaign to Protect the Powerful."

We'll continue our conversation after this very quick break, We'll be right back.

- [Narrator] To watch more One on One with Steve Adubato find us online and follow us on Social media.

- We're back talking with David Enrich.

You see his book, "Murder The Truth."

David, help me on this.

I often think about, and I mentioned this in the beginning of the program about what's in our head as journalists, and we're aware of our responsibility to tell the truth, to ask tough questions, to be critical.

But then I also think, is there some sort of, quote "self-censorship", a quiet censorship, where what we ultimately do is, and it's not just the Trump administration, it could be corporations.

Listen, for those of us in public broadcasting who are often, we have to go out and receive corporate and, go out and get corporate and foundation dollars.

Super candid, there have been times that we've done programming where certain corporations or foundations are like, "Hey, wait a minute, we don't like that," and we've lost those dollars.

Long-winded way of getting to this, how the heck do we as journalists avoid self-censoring what we do for fear, not of Trump or the federal government, the president, of corporations and foundations who can hurt us financially?

Or on my way off base on that, David?

- No, I don't think you're way off base.

I mean, look, I will say that I work at "The New York Times."

I've been here for like eight years.

Before that, I worked at "The Wall Street Journal."

And at neither of those places did I ever personally experience that kind of self-censorship.

There was a very- - Never?

Never had an editor, listen, David you probably shouldn't do that.

- No, I really didn't.

We had plenty of times where we got vigorous pushback and sometimes, and often, in fact, legal threats from the powerful people or institutions, whether they're companies or, you know, government agencies or nonprofit organizations or foundations.

We got lots of pushback and sometimes threats and occasionally get sued by those organizations.

And those threats sometimes do have an effect on what you're writing, but it was never the kind of self-censorship that was driven by, at least as far as I could tell, from commercial considerations.

Now, there were some places that I worked at prior to arriving at "The Wall Street Journal" in 2007 where I did witness that kind of stuff and I found that to be really unsettling, but, you know, but to me, the more troubling type of self-censorship is when people are, or journalists or news organizations are making decisions to kind of water down stories or not cover things, not because of the commercial considerations like someone's gonna pull advertising or something like that, but because they're concerned that the legal risks of moving ahead with publication are, you know, so scary that it just doesn't make, it's just irrational almost to move forward.

And the thing I'll say is that I work at "The New York Times."

We have a lot of money, relatively speaking.

We have really good in-house lawyers.

We have a family ownership that is deeply committed to doing fearless journalism.

- You're not the norm, David.

You're not the norm.

- No.

No, that's what I was about to say.

Like what I- - Harvard is not the norm.

For higher ed, sorry for interrupting, Harvard's not the norm.

"New York Times," not the norm.

The rest of us are just trying to stay in the game and do the right thing.

- I totally get that.

And that's actually what I was getting at.

Although I was being a little long-winded perhaps.

- Not at all, not at all.

- One of the things I saw in reporting this book and one of the things I focus on in the book are stories about smaller news organizations, independent journalists, community activists, people like that that do not have any of those types of resources and are just on their own.

And for them, and a lot of times that is where these legal threats are being aimed at, first and foremost, is at smaller places and independent places that do not have the resources to fight back.

And they often back down.

And, you know, that means that the public is being deprived sometimes of very valuable information about wrongdoing and it just goes unreported.

- Let me be crystal clear, the leadership in public broadcasting has done nothing but communicate to those of us on the air, whether we work for public broadcasting or work in the universe of public broadcasting, to do nothing other than what we are doing.

Asking tough questions, telling the truth, being transparent, disclosing all kinds of things in terms of who underwrites us.

I wanna be clear on that.

But I'm also concerned, and I want you to talk about this, for those who argue that we are the, quote, and I'm staying on the media thing because it's important, enemy of the people, traitors, put them in jail, that kind of talk, you hear more and more, and not just from certain politicians in Washington, but from an awful lot of citizens who believe we are the enemy of the people.

How does that talk, how does what we're talking about right now, quote, potentially harm our representative democracy?

- Well, you know, journalism has been around for a long time in this country and the Framers of the Constitution, in crafting the First Amendment, the entire conception of that was that you have various checks and balances within the government.

One of the checks and balances is having a vigorous, independent, and kind of courageous media that is going to not pull punches when writing about powerful people or wealthy people.

And so to the extent that you have a whole system in place to weaken the media, to undermine the credibility of the media, and to instill fear in the media, that really compromises journalists' jobs or ability to do their jobs, which is to do their best to ascertain the truth and to inform the public about the truth.

And again, I fully recognize that the news media often falls down on that job or is at least often imperfect in that job.

But in my experience, it is generally not for lack of trying.

We certainly have our biases.

Those biases lead us to miss stories or overplay stories or be too hard on someone or be too soft on someone else for sure.

And we're not always the best about acknowledging those mistakes when we get things wrong.

But again, in my experience, having done this my entire adult life, I have almost always seen journalists really doing their level best to get things right, and I think that's a really important part.

Having an informed citizenry and having information out there that pierces the spin and opacity that politicians often use on both the left and the right I think is really important.

- David, real quick before, I don't wanna say let you go 'cause I've enjoyed this conversation on many levels, the epilogue of the book, wow, subtitle, you know where I'm going here.

- I think I do.

- "A Misogynist and a Snake."

Why did you write this epilogue?

And, I mean, this is more personal, not just professional for you.

Please, in the couple minutes we have left.

- Yeah, I mean, I had spent a long time writing about the legal threats and intimidation tactics that powerful people and powerful lawyers use to shut down unfavorable reporting.

And then I kind of got a taste of that up close and personal when a law firm that I'd been writing about called Clare Locke started using those tactics against me.

And initially it was them casting aspersions to my employer about just my integrity and my honesty.

Luckily, my employer had my back, but eventually they went to such great lengths that they identified some of who my sources were and sent threats to my sources and my sources, scared about getting sued, handed over all their electronic communications with me, which luckily were relatively innocuous because we'd not been communicating electronically that much.

But, boy, it was a moment for me where I really, I mean, I thought I knew about these tactics.

I thought I kind of had a grip on what this was like.

And this really, it surprised me.

It really stunned me, in fact, and it really underscored to me the fact that, you know, the array of tactics and threats that are being used these days to scare journalists is really quite extreme.

And again, I'm someone with the privilege of working for a major news organization that has a lot of support and that is a privilege that not many journalists these days have.

- Two things before I let you go real quick.

In 2002, I haven't disclosed this on the air, in 2002, I was working for a commercial network in New York City, one of the three major networks, and I was a political analyst slash commentator, and I challenged a candidate running for major public office on the air in an interview.

And that candidate's campaign threatened to pull their advertising on that station.

And I was, literally the same day, I was called into the president of news division's office and told I didn't really have to come back.

- Wow.

- And so, and listen, I'm trying to make myself, not saying, "Oh, oh, look at me."

It's just that I understand the lawsuit part of this, the litigious issues that you're talking about, but the economic issues are, they were concerned about losing that money and they were like, "Look, don't come back.

You're done."

Point being, all of us who are in this, and I won't get on my soapbox, it is scary.

These are tricky times for all of us.

And if we say we have to stay in the game, and so the economics, we have to just make sure we bring in enough money to pay the bills.

But if we're not doing what we're supposed to be doing on the air, I'm on my soapbox, I realize, then what's the point of doing this?

I'm done with my stuff.

David, you got one minute left.

What's the message you want people to take from "Murder The Truth?"

- That free speech is important, even if you don't like what we're saying, even if...

It's about protecting everyone's rights, not just journalists, but everyone's rights to kind of freely speak up about matters of public importance.

And those rights are often not fully understood, but they're really important to all of us.

- Finally, finally, is it especially important when someone says something we disagree with and people think they should, quote, have a right to shut it down, we especially need to protect the rights of others to say things that we disagree with?

Fair?

- Yeah, that is fair.

And I think that's a really important point.

And it's very easy to support free speech when you agree with that speech, but I think one of the things that everyone right now especially needs to remember is that when you start shutting down speech that you don't like or that is unpopular, that poses a real threat to your own ability to speak freely in the future.

- David Enrich has written a terrific book, "Murder the Truth: Fear, the First Amendment, and a Secret Campaign to Protect the Powerful."

David, I cannot thank you enough for staying with us the entire program.

Well said.

- Thank you for having me.

- You got it.

I'm Steve Adubato.

That's David Enrich.

We'll see you next time.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by Delta Dental of New Jersey.

The New Jersey Economic Development Authority.

Johnson & Johnson.

NJM Insurance Group.

Seton Hall University.

The New Jersey Education Association.

Atlantic Health System.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

And by The Turrell Fund, a foundation serving children.

Promotional support provided by New Jersey Globe.

And by ROI-NJ.

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