Description

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom...of the press." This reflected sentiments expressed contemporaneously by Thomas Jefferson, who when John Jay was maligned in the press by a colleague wrote to James Currie that, while unfortunate, "it is however an evil for which there is no remedy. Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost" and later wrote to the Marquis de Lafayette that "the only security of all is in a free press." In January 2019, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi concurred, commenting that “Of all of the freedoms of our country, the freedom of the press is the guardian of the gate of our democracy. Whatever other violations the government or others may exert, if the press can talk about it, freedom exists.”