Free Press, Free People

Every day, this newsletter brings you the best of New York Times journalism — scoops, investigations, reports from inside war zones or natural disasters, interviews with powerful people and quirky characters, stories that help explain our messy, complicated, frustrating and occasionally delightful world. Sometimes we take for granted what makes that possible.

The freedom to ask tough questions. To go where news is happening. To tell the truth even when it makes people mad.

Last week, our publisher, A.G. Sulzberger, gave an important speech at the University of Notre Dame about how these freedoms of the press underpin our freedoms as people — how journalism helps hold up democracy. You can — and should! — read the whole thing here, but I also asked the big boss a few questions about it.

We usually think of threats to journalists and state control of the media as the scourge of authoritarian societies. How can this be happening here, home of the vaunted First Amendment?

There are two very different types of journalistic repression. The more dangerous and dramatic occurs in places like China and Russia, where journalists have their work overtly censored, or are even jailed or killed over it.

But there is a subtler, more insidious, playbook for going after journalists in democracies. Selectively using investigatory or regulatory powers to punish journalists and news organizations, for example. Filing frivolous lawsuits against them. Targeting their owners’ unrelated business interests.