A leader at war with the 1st Amendment

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is coming to Northeast Ohio next month.

So it begins.

DeSantis, of course, is the controversial Florida governor and likely Republican presidential candidate for 2024, and his appearance at the Summit County Republican Lincoln Day breakfast might be viewed as the unofficial kickoff to the presidential race in Ohio.

This is not a column about the presidential race. I’ll write that soon, tossing some ideas at you on how we might approach covering it. This is a column about the First Amendment.

Ron DeSantis is not a friend of the First Amendment.

We embrace the First Amendment in our newsroom. Among its important elements, it prohibits Congress from abridging the freedom of the press. That’s us. And we firmly believe that a chief reason our system of government has worked so well until recently is that an independent press provides needed checks to the abuse of government power. We long have been the independent watchdogs.

We get wary in a hurry when a candidate like DeSantis looms on the horizon. As defenders of the First Amendment, it’s our job to protect it against those who attack it. We will do so vigorously in the campaign ahead.

Free speech is not just the right of the press, though. The First Amendment also specifically protects your right to free speech. For more than 230 years, Americans have had a guaranteed right to openly criticize their government, their elected leaders and, yes, the press. This nation got started with free speech, in the form of the Declaration of Independence, which called out King George with a list of grievances.

Stifling free speech is what authoritarians do. It’s what fascists do. Look no further than Vladimir Putin’s shutting down of any criticism in his nation of his despicable attempt to take over Ukraine.

For more than 50 years, a fundamental free speech protection has come from the U.S. Supreme Court decision in New York Times v. Sullivan. The precedent delineates between regular people and public figures. If we or someone else say something defamatory about someone who is not a public figure, they merely must prove we were negligent in our error to seek damages.

But public figures have a much tougher standard. They have to prove someone recklessly disregarded the truth in defaming them.

New York Times v. Sullivan enshrined our ability as Americans to criticize public officials without fear of retribution. It is as fundamental a right as our democracy provides.

DeSantis wants to end it. He’s hoping to get a case before the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the precedent, which would allow public figures to successfully sue anyone who says something incorrect about them. We’re talking politicians. We’re talking sports figures. We’re talking about editors like me.

Think about it. If you go on social media to criticize a Cleveland Browns player and get your facts mixed up, without New York Times v. Sullivan, you could easily be sued. The bar for a lawsuit would be so low as to be chilling. You would become afraid to voice your opinion. And the media would be exposed to many more lawsuits that, even if the media were to prevail, would carry costly legal fees.

That’s what DeSantis wants. He wants to stop the media and anyone else from criticizing him. He wants to stifle freedom of the speech and freedom of the press. That is not what defenders of American democracy do. It is what authoritarians do. It is what fascists do. Again, look at Putin.

DeSantis is rabid in his attacks on the media. Just this month his administration helped get a reporter fired. Ben Montgomery, a Tampa reporter for Axios Local, received a press release from the DeSantis administration that didn’t announce anything. Montgomery sent a note to the press officer calling the press release propaganda.

Now, you should understand the relationship between reporters and government press officers. There is a lot of back and forth. Reporters will speak up if they are being unfairly blocked from information, and press officers will complain if they feel reporting is unfair. Good-natured trash talk prevails, in conversations that never see the light of day. It’s how the game is played.

The Florida press officer, shockingly, took Montgomery’s private communication to her and published it on Twitter, where it was viewed more than a million times. Axios fired Montgomery because he had “irreparably tarnished” the news organization’s reputation because he called the press release propaganda, he says. If that is the actual reason Axios fired him, it’s shameful. He didn’t do anything wrong. The press officer who put a private communication out for all to see broke the rules. Axios should have stood by him.

The message is clear, though. The DeSantis administration did not like a reporter’s attitude, and the reporter is out of a job.

That does not happen in a democratic nation with freedom of the press and free speech. It’s what happens when authoritarians and fascists are in charge.

Elected leaders are not supposed to seek revenge on those who criticize them, but consider what DeSantis did when Walt Disney World criticized him. More than 50 years ago, the state of Florida made a deal with Walt Disney to bring a theme park to Orlando, creating a special government district that Disney would control. I lived in the Orlando area for nine years and always thought it was a shady deal, but it was a deal the state made to expand its tourism industry.

When Disney criticized DeSantis’ so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law, DeSantis used his power to persuade the state legislature to cancel the decades-old deal. DeSantis punished Disney for exercising free speech rights.

That’s not what elected leaders who believe in our democratic principles do.

DeSantis is part of a growing trend of elected leaders promoting hate with incendiary invective. He has attacked teachings about Black history and drag shows. He sees a path to the presidency in culture wars. When leaders espouse hate, though, people follow, and one ramification we see today is a rapid rise in anti-Semitism. We’re seeing more and more hateful acts against people and institutions because they are Jewish.

Freedom of religion is another right guaranteed by the First Amendment. It is under attack.

I don’t know what the people of Florida are thinking these days in electing someone so opposed to basic American principles, but now he is headed to Ohio. Well-heeled Republicans will pay as much as $10,000 to attend that Summit County Lincoln Day dinner with him, meaning some of your fellow Ohioans are OK with a candidate who tramples the Constitution.

Before I wrap this up, I have to note DeSantis’ attacks on the media come as the press in America is withering. Newspapers have closed by the hundreds and continue to, meaning the watchdogs that have been the guardrails are disappearing. Anger-mongers like Tucker Carlson fill the void.

At cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer, we are one of the shrinking number of robust newsrooms fulfilling the role the founding fathers envisioned when they wrote the First Amendment. Even though we are financially healthy, our future is not guaranteed. If you fear the growing attacks on the Constitution and believe in what we do, please – please -- consider supporting us with a subscription to cleveland.com. It costs just a few dimes a day, at https://www.cleveland.com/subscribe/

We’ve been told all of our lives that our Democratic system of government is the best in the world but remains relatively new and fragile. We’ve been told we need a ceaseless focus on protecting it.

Ron DeSantis is coming to Northeast Ohio next month.

So it begins.

I’m at cquinn@cleveland.com.

Thanks for reading.