Dan Rather, Sam Donaldson and Others Demand Press Call Trump Out to His Face at Glitzy Dinner in Scorching Letter

AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson

More than 250 journalists, including 94-year-old former CBS News anchor Dan Rather and 92-year-old former ABC News anchor Sam Donaldson, signed an open letter on Monday urging the press to “forcefully demonstrate opposition” to President Donald Trump during the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner this week.

“We, the undersigned, call upon the White House Correspondents’ Association to use the occasion of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, to forcefully demonstrate opposition to President Trump’s efforts to trample freedom of the press, the letter read:

The dinner has long served as a symbol of the vital and irreplaceable role of a free press in American democracy and a celebration of the First Amendment and the journalists who uphold it. President Trump’s systematic, sustained, and unprecedented attacks on the free press (detailed below) render his presence at such an event a profound contradiction of its purpose.

The collective weight of the administration’s actions – retaliatory access bans, coercive regulatory investigations, frivolous lawsuits against the press, defunding of public broadcasting, dismantling of international broadcasting, physical restrictions on journalists, personal verbal attacks on reporters, assaults on the media in official White House press releases and social media posts, the arrest of journalists, and the pardoning of those who committed violence against the press represent the most systematic and comprehensive assault on freedom of the press by a sitting American president.

There is a long tradition of presidents attending the White House Correspondents Association Dinner. But these are not normal times, and this cannot be business as usual with the press standing up to applaud the man who attacks them on a daily basis.

We understand that some journalists plan to wear pocket handkerchiefs or lapel pins with the words of the First Amendment. And continuing in that spirit, we believe the White House Correspondents Association should take stronger action by issuing – from the podium – a forceful defense of freedom of the press and condemnation of those who threaten that freedom, followed by a standing toast to the First Amendment and a pledge to continue upholding such a critical cornerstone of our democracy. Speak forcefully, in front of the man who seeks to undermine our country’s long tradition of an independent, strong, and free press.

We also urge the WHCA to reaffirm, without equivocation, that freedom of the press is not a partisan issue and that the Association will not normalize this behavior but instead fight back against any officeholder who has waged systematic war against the journalists whose work the dinner celebrates.

The letter went on to list 22 examples of the Trump administration’s “attacks on freedom of the press.”

Prominent signatures included Rather, Donaldson, former Dateline NBC anchor Ann Curry, former NBC host Bob Dotson, former ABC News correspondent and Obama official Linda Douglass, and PBS NewsHour Stephanie Sy.

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