Israel’s censorship of the AP is a cautionary tale for the US

Philosophers consider slippery slope arguments to be logical fallacies. But those philosophers haven’t met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government. 

It took Israel about three weeks after banning Al Jazeera — due to purported national security risks stemming from its Qatari funding — to use the same law as a pretext to censor the Associated Press, one of the world’s largest news agencies. 

Fortunately, Israel quickly reversed course after pressure from the U.S. and press organizations. But the ordeal should serve as a cautionary tale for President Biden and U.S. lawmakers and prosecutors. They keep empowering future administrations to harass the media — apparently trusting them, against all historical evidence, to use restraint.  

And if (more like when) the U.S. government does abuse its new powers against the press, the superpower is not likely to back off in response to international pushback like Israel did. Otherwise Julian Assange would be a free man. 

Israel’s justification for the raid was that the AP broke the law by providing images to Al Jazeera, which is among numerous clients worldwide that receive video feeds from the AP. There was no allegation that any image endangered national security, but officials nonetheless seized the AP’s equipment, killing its live feed and temporarily stripping millions of people of a view inside Gaza. 

Perhaps Israeli authorities saw transparency itself as a national security threat. The U.S. should be able to relate — officials who once sought to censor the Pentagon Papers on security grounds now acknowledge the government’s real concern was embarrassment. 

Israel has shut the international press out of Gaza (in addition to killing at least 100 journalists). Some even floated sanctioning the country’s oldest newspaper, Haaretz, for criticizing the current government. Biden’s administration is reportedly concerned about journalists turning public opinion against Israel by exposing the devastation the Israel-Gaza war has caused. 

With that backdrop, who could’ve predicted that Israel wouldn’t stop with Al Jazeera once it started censoring news outlets? Well, other than press freedom advocates everywhere. 

The AP seizure is not Israel’s first attack on U.S. news outlets. Last year, an organization calling itself HonestReporting published a report speculating that news outlets that bought photographs of the Oct. 7 terrorist attack from Palestinian freelancers — including the New York Times, AP, CNN and Reuters — must have had advance notice of the massacre. 

Netanyahu seized on the spurious allegations, calling the photojournalists “accomplices in crimes against humanity” and condemning the media outlets that published their work. In the U.S., Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and over a dozen state attorneys general called for investigations of whether the news outlets had violated laws against supporting terrorism. HonestReporting later admitted it had no evidence that the freelancers — let alone the international outlets to which they sold photographs — had notice of the attack, but the damage was already done. 

That and other efforts to demonize the media and foster right-wing persecution complexes create the perfect climate for Israel’s government to justify guilt by association censorship tactics, all while continuing to tout its democratic values to distinguish itself from its adversaries.

The U.S. — which this year slid to 55th on Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index — could be headed down a similar path. 

Like Israel’s legislation that allowed it to ban Al Jazeera, the TikTok ban bill that Biden signed last month isn’t limited to TikTok. It allows Biden and his successors to ban platforms owned or controlled by foreign adversaries that allow user interaction (for example, newspaper websites that allow online comments) if they deem the platforms a national security threat. The list of adversaries is limited for now but it’s subject to expansion. 

People like Cotton and former (and potential future) President Donald Trump would surely be just as eager to make use of those powers as Netanyahu was of his own new censorship authority. Trump makes no secret of his desire to harass and even shut down news outlets he doesn’t like, and our current government keeps handing him the means to do so. 

It’s not only the TikTok bill. The recent extension of intelligence agencies’ censorship authorities under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act could allow the government to enlist ordinary citizens and businesses to surreptitiously surveil news outlets that communicate with foreigners. 

Congress passed that bill with bipartisan support — and Biden signed it — apparently without any thought given to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s propensity for spying on journalists (and Trump’s not the only former president with that habit). 

And the House recently passed a bill to empower secretaries of the Treasury to revoke the tax exempt status of nonprofit news outlets (and other nonprofits) they unilaterally deem supporters of terrorism. Lawmakers from both parties thought that was a wise idea despite those recent accusations from prominent elected officials that even the most mainstream of U.S. news outlets illegally support terror, not just by buying pictures by supposedly Hamas-connected photographers but even by merely reporting critically about Israel. 

Federal prosecutors also keep pushing for precedents to allow future prosecutors to criminalize and silence journalism — all while Trump’s team reportedly contemplates how to best weaponize the Department of Justice in a potential second term. 

The prosecution of Assange, if successful despite recent setbacks, threatens to outlaw routine national security journalism by exploiting overbroad and arcane language from the Espionage Act. Meanwhile, district attorneys in Florida are seeking to label newsworthy information “criminal contraband” to restrain journalist Tim Burke from publishing it. 

That’s just part of a nationwide trend of criminalizing routine journalism at a time when the media is at its most vulnerable due to its financial struggles.

Logical fallacy or not, that slope sure feels awfully slippery these days. To stop the slide, the Biden administration needs to loudly call on Israel to stop censoring the media — including not just American outlets like the AP, but also foreign ones like Al Jazeera — and to let international journalists report freely and safely from Gaza. And it needs to stop handing Trump and others like him their dream toolkit to retaliate against uncooperative members of the Fourth Estate.

That would be a good start in repairing America’s standing to lead on press freedom — not just pay lip service to it when it’s politically convenient.   

Seth Stern is the director of advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation and a First Amendment lawyer.