President Donald Trump said the “person that did the story” for an unidentified media outlet about a missing U.S. fighter jet crew member who was missing in Iran after his plane was shot down “will go to jail” if they do not reveal who provided the information.
Trump made the remarks at a press conference Monday at the White House. The president did not identify what news organization he was referring to that had first reported on the missing crew member. The U.S. government had wanted to keep the fact that the second airman was missing confidential, in order to prevent him from being captured or killed by Iran. American forces located and rescued the second crew member in Iranian territory early Sunday, after the pilot had been rescued Friday, March 3.
Trump spoke of the “two extraordinary rescues” of the stranded U.S. military personnel. “As you probably know, we didn’t talk about the first one for an hour. And then somebody leaked something, which we’ll hopefully find — that leaker. We’re looking very hard to find that leaker,” Trump said at the press conference.
The president said the “leaker” is “a sick person,” and he said that the “person that did the story will go to jail if he doesn’t say” who the source was. “And I think everybody would understand that,” Trump added. “They put this mission at great risk.”
“We’re going to go to the media company that released it and we’re going to say, ‘National security, give it up or go to jail,’” Trump told reporters.
The White House press office, reached for comment, said an investigation into the matter is underway but declined to provide the name of the news outlet Trump was alluding to.
In a statement about Trump’s comments, Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said that news organizations “have a First Amendment right to publish stories about matters of public importance — including stories the government would prefer to suppress.”
“President Trump’s threat to force journalists to disclose their sources raises serious press freedom concerns because journalists’ ability to do their work turns in part on their ability to protect their sources’ identities,” Jaffer said. “President Trump’s threat should be understood as an effort to intimidate the press and to prevent journalists from doing work the public needs them to do.”
National Press Club president Mark Schoeff Jr. also released a statement about Trump’s threat. “President Trump’s public suggestion that journalists should be jailed if they refuse to reveal confidential sources is a direct threat to the First Amendment and the core function of a free press,” he said. “The government has a legitimate responsibility to safeguard classified information. But that responsibility does not extend to punishing journalists for lawful reporting or coercing them to disclose sources.”
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