President Donald Trump “is seeking to bring the power of the federal government down on outlets who he has accused of bias,” according to MSNBC columnist Jessica Levinson.
After Trump re-assumed office, the Federal Communications Commission chair has launched investigations against NPR and PBS over on-air recognition of financial sponsors.
He also signed an Executive Order, which Levinson believes “seeks to further use the federal government's levers of power to punish NPR and PBS, whose content Trump argues isn’t ‘fair, accurate, or unbiased.’” The Executive Order also cut funding to the outlet.
NPR has sued the administration, claiming they “lack the power” to stop funding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).
Levinson believes “the biggest part of NPR’s suit, though, centers on the first part of the Bill of Rights, the First Amendment.”
“Here’s where Trump’s honesty about why he wants to eviscerate federal funding for NPR and PBS could be his legal downfall," she went on to say, “In addition to his accusation that the media outlets’ broadcasts aren’t ‘fair, accurate, or unbiased,’ Trump describes what NPR publishes as ‘left-wing propaganda.’”
“NPR has thus argued that Trump admitted that he’s using his power as head of the executive branch of our government to target NPR and PBS because he disagrees with the content of their speech,” Levinson, who is a professor at Loyola Law School, wrote.
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“When I teach First Amendment law, I tell my students that there’s one type of First Amendment violation that stands out as the most egregious kind: a content-based law.”
Giving an example of what this type of content-based law revolves around, Levinson said, “A rule that ‘no one can argue that basketball is a better sport than baseball in public parks’ would be viewpoint discrimination.”
She added, “The Trump administration isn’t targeting NPR because it covers political news. To the contrary, the administration appears to have explicitly admitted that it’s targeting NPR because of what Trump considers to be its bias as it covers political news. NPR’s lawsuit argues that, therefore, Trump’s executive order is ‘textbook retaliation and viewpoint-based discrimination.’”
Noting that viewpoint-based discrimination is presumptively unconstitutional, Levinson said, “If there is one thing the First Amendment is designed to guard against, it is a government’s seeking to insulate itself from criticism by picking winners and losers.”