We're divided in new ways over our core First Amendment freedoms

  As the new year begins, First Amendment issues are as controversial and multi-faceted as anything in our fractured, divided society.

From NBA to Trump to our ears and eyes, how free speech works

  Let’s chat for just a moment about free speech.

  Many of us have been talking about that very subject recently, from NBA stars and league executives to Chinese government officials, from President Trump to journalists and members of Congress.

  Some ground rules for our conversation: The First Amendment protects us from government attempts to control what we say or from punishment simply for having said it. Freedom of speech — one of five freedoms in the amendment — offers no protection from private companies or individuals who don’t like what we say or hold other views.

A brief history of television interviews – and why live TV helps those who lie and want to hide

  First, it happened on Fox News. Chris Wallace asked White House adviser Stephen Miller about the president’s decision to use private lawyers “to get information from the Ukrainian government rather than go through … agencies of his government.”

  Miller’s response began, “two different points –” when Wallace cut him off.

  “How about answering my question?” Wallace asked. Miller, changing the subject, ignored Wallace.

  Wallace’s question was never answered.

Note to White House: You don't get to decide the “rules,” either

  Even as the White House restored the “hard pass” to CNN’s Jim Acosta, permitting him onto White House grounds, it promulgated some new, unrealistic rules for journalists attempting to fly under the flag of “decorum.”

  Let’s start with Rule No. 1 — only one question.

  Rule No. 2 — well, maybe more than one if the president or someone else at the podium decides otherwise.

  But what if the person at the podium tries to evade the first tough question? Horrors, the very idea that politicians might consider such a tactic! Any journalist worth his/her salt will and should want to follow up — that’s in the public’s interest, if not that of the podium prevaricator. So Rule Nos. 1 and 2 won’t work for anyone on the public’s side of the mic.

Sorry, Mr. President — You don't get to choose

  Sorry Mr. President, but you don’t get to just pick and choose who — on behalf of the public — gets access to the White House to ask you questions on our behalf.

  Your predecessors in the White House — Washington, Jefferson, Madison and the like — settled that matter with the Bill of Rights some time ago.

  Whoever told you that you should pull the security pass for CNN’s Jim Acosta — or failed to tell you that you shouldn’t — was wrong.

From cable to the White House, the mainstreaming of white nationalism

  It doesn’t take the infiltration of a hate group meeting or a deep dive into extremist chat rooms to be exposed to white nationalist ideas.

  Take Dylann Roof, who murdered nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, after a chain of events that started with a simple Google search.

  As Roof wrote in an online manifesto, when he typed the words “black on White crime” into Google, he came across the website of a crudely racist group called the Council of Conservative Citizens. There, he found what he described as “pages upon pages of these brutal black on White murders.”

Gene Policinski: Demand truth, not junk news: Lessons of ‘PizzaGate,’ ‘IdiotGate’

  First we had “PizzaGate,” in which a misguided — but heavily armed — young man chasing a ridiculous conspiracy theory fired shots inside a Washington, D.C., pizza parlor in 2016.

  Now, we have what can only be called “IdiotGate,” in which a 19-year old Michigan man has been charged with threatening to gun down CNN staff and on-air journalists after claiming to be upset over “fake news.”

Larry M. Elkin: The hazards of secondhand news

  Let's talk about a product found in virtually every American household that sometimes causes serious side effects, including anxiety, depression, delusions, and even fits of anger. You might think this product should come labeled with advice to keep it out of the reach of children.

  It does not. I am talking about the news.

Eric Alterman: The ‘Virtually Voiceless’

   When literary critic Lionel Trilling wrote in 1950 that liberalism was “not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition” in the United States, he meant it as a lament. He noted that while some conservative opposition to liberal thought did exist, its proponents remained inarticulate and could “express themselves” only through “irritable mental gestures.” He also wrote of the fear that liberalism would grow flat and flaccid without a worthy intellectual sparring partner to keep it fresh.

  Liberals today face an even graver situation, as conservatism threatens to run off the rails of reality entirely, and liberalism is thus once again in danger of having no real intellectual opposition to force internal questioning or truth seeking about what works and what does not in the present political era.

Ian M. MacIsaac:The Supreme Court rules on health care, with logic (evidently) too complicated for television

  The sprawling crowd mulled nervously in the square, most of them facing the great columned facade of the Supreme Court building. Clusters of protesters with colorful hats and signs representing all conceivable sides of the issue at hand were flanked by numerous visiting public figures and celebrities, all surrounded by the press, cameras and recorders in hand.

  It was 10 am Thursday, June 28, across 1st Street Northeast from Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Briefs containing the Supreme Court's ruling on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act--the president's health care bill centered around an individual mandate--were being brought down from within the depths of the huge building in stapled sheafs to be handed out to the members of the press waiting eagerly outside.

  At the White House, in the area immediately outside the Oval Office traditionally termed the 'Outer Oval,' President Obama stood amid a mini-control room of televisions that White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew had tuned to show four separate news channels.