Who Says We Need News Media? The Founders of this Country.

Eqsuire Magazine reports that the Trump administration wants to kick the press out of the White House. 

"There has been no decision," Sean Spicer, Trump's press secretary, said about the plan today. But Spicer acknowledged that "there has been some discussion about how to do it."

Donald Trump has already started hammering away at the press, recently refusing to answer a senior correspondent from CNN at his first press conference.  This was in retaliation for CNN’s report that the CIA had briefed Trump, President Obama, and Vice President Biden,  that reliable sources indicate that Russian intelligence may have compromising photos and video of Trump.




Trump may not like the fact that CNN made such a report, but at least they didn’t publish the details of those photos and/or videos.  Trump screamed that the media network was “false news,” although he offered no refutation of their story.  He just decided to cut them out.

This goes against everything this nation was founded upon.  And don’t take MY word for it:

The liberty of the press is essential to the security of freedom in a state: it ought not, therefore, to be restrained in this commonwealth.

• John Adams, Samuel Adams, James Bowdoin (1780). Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Commonwealth of Massachusetts. pp. Article XVI.Text

The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Colonel Edward Carrington (16 January 1787) Lipscomb & Bergh ed. 6:57.

 

  
The freedom of the press is one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.

• George Mason, Virginia Declaration of Rights, Article 12 (1776).

...if Men are to be precluded from offering their sentiments on a matter... the freedom of Speech may be taken away... reason is of no use to us - dumb & silent we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter...
         
George Washington, A Letter to Officers of the Army, March 15, 1783

Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government; when this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins.

Benjamin Franklin,  “On Freedom of Speech and the Press”, 1737