[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Page 20596]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             PRESS FREEDOM

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, we are all too familiar with President 
Trump's ``fake news'' mantra, which he has repeatedly used to discredit 
unfavorable news reports and undermine the credibility of the media in 
our country.
  This mantra and the accompanying threats to freedoms of speech and of 
the press have now spread far beyond our borders. Autocrats and 
dictators around the world are enthusiastically using the concept of 
fake news and the legitimacy granted to it by the President of the 
United States to further undermine and restrict press freedom and fact-
based reporting on corruption, human rights, and other abuses in their 
own countries.
  For example, in response to an Amnesty International report on 
thousands of military prison deaths in Syria, President Bashar al-Assad 
remarked, ``You can forge anything these days, we are living in a fake 
news era.'' Similarly, in response to news reports on persecution of 
the Rohingya ethnic minority group in Myanmar, an officer in Myanmar's 
Rakhine state security ministry stated, ``There is no such thing as 
Rohingya. It is fake news.''
  The list goes on and includes comments from autocratic leaders in the 
Philippines, Venezuela, Russia, China, and Turkey, among others, who 
have used the fake news mantra to legitimize harassment, arrests, and 
prosecutions of journalists.
  Last week, the Committee to Protect Journalists, CPJ, released its 
annual census of imprisoned journalists worldwide, which has hit an 
historical high of 262. The total does not include the many more 
journalists who were imprisoned for a period of time during the year 
before being released prior to the December 1 census. A CPJ statement 
published with the report noted that: ``Far from isolating repressive 
countries for their authoritarian behavior, the United States, in 
particular, has cozied up to strongmen such as Turkish President Recep 
Tayyip Erdogan and Chinese President Xi Jinping. At the same time, 
President Donald Trump's nationalistic rhetoric, fixation on Islamic 
extremism, and insistence on labeling critical media `fake news' serves 
to reinforce the framework of accusations and legal charges that allow 
such leaders to preside over the jailing of journalists.''
  The First Amendment to the United States Constitution has inspired 
people around the world for over 200 years. It was reaffirmed in the 
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and versions of it have been 
included in the constitutions of many countries; yet while the United 
States has long been a global leader for freedom of expression, the 
White House is now actively working to undermine press freedom. 
President Trump's reckless rhetoric has not only harmed our credibility 
and our reputation, it has emboldened foreign dictators who fear 
nothing more than for their misdeeds to be exposed by the media. The 
consequence is journalists threatened and imprisoned, journalists 
assassinated with impunity, publishers who are intimidated, and the 
ultimate casualty is the truth.

                          ____________________