A handful of Sutton case
press coverage. Why was America so caught up in this story?

“There is nothing which will make the eagle shriek louder than the shadow of a muzzle for the press,” John L. Given wrote in 1907.* In that same year, a young Marine Corps Lieutenant died on the grounds of the Naval Academy after a brawl. His mother’s crusade to find the truth about what really happened to her son after the government accused him of suicide became the subject of hundreds of newspaper articles across the United States. As Rosa Sutton put it, “if we do not get justice through the courts, every newspaper in the United States will have the facts as we have them and then see what the opinion of the world will be.” The strength of America’s press corps at the turn of the 20th century is a key reason that the United States Navy re-examined the Sutton case.

Regular readers know Rosa Sutton’s story is the subject of A Soul on Trial, my book that will be published in May in a new edition for the first time in paperback and as an e-book. Among the reasons for this new edition, is the darkening shadow of a muzzle for the press that our nation is experiencing right now. This is not a conservative versus a liberal issue. (Just note what the current administration is saying about the “lowlife” Wall Street Journal.) This is an American issue. Historian Heather Cox Richardson is a reliable source for daily information about what is happening in the news and to your news. One reason her Newsletter is so valuable is that she links to her sources at the bottom. The March 15 issue of Letters from an American reports on coverage of the war on Iran and our own government’s attacks on the media.

As Richardson notes, [Yesterday President] Trump “posted an image titled “PRESIDENT TRUMP IS RESHAPING THE MEDIA,” with three categories: “GONE,” “REFORMS,” and “WINNING.” Under “gone” was the defunding of PBS and NPR, as well as a list of reporters who have been fired since Trump took office in 2025. Under “reforms,” the image claimed Trump was the “Most Accessible POTUS Ever,” and boasted that under CBS’s new ownership by Trump ally David Ellison the station has a “News Bias Ombudsman,” and suggested that CNN would soon be under “New Ownership” as well. Under “winning” was a quotation from The Guardian that “Trump is waging war against the media—and winning.”

“Hours later, Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr threatened the broadcast licenses of media stations. He quoted Trump when he posted: “Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions—also known as the fake news—have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up. The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not…. It is very important to bring trust back into media, which has earned itself the label of fake news.” Then Carr slipped in his own fake news, suggesting that Trump won “a landslide election victory” when in fact he received less than 50% of the vote, and concluded: “Time for change!”

There have been new posts on this website about the Sutton case, the free press and public opinion in recent weeks that did not post to this mailing list. Take a look if you have time. Do any of you remember Edna Ferber? Here’s why she thought it was so important to VOTE. You don’t have to disagree with everything that’s happening right now to understand that some of the things that are happening weaken our democracy. Let’s let Heather Cox Richardson have the last word:  “The Framers of the U.S. Constitution understood that a free press is imperative for a democracy. They established the right to a free press in the First Amendment that begins the Bill of Rights. Silencing critics is the refuge of those who know what they are doing is unpopular and unjustifiable.”

Postscript: Once again, thanks to our court system, there is hope. On March 22 Charlie Savage wrote in the New York Times that “a federal judge… forcefully defended the constitutional freedom to report independently and without government control, striking down the [current] administration’s unprecedented restrictions on reporters that have emptied the Pentagon’s halls of traditional journalists at a time of expanding war.” Let’s hope this decision holds.

The cover for the May 2026 release of A Soul on Trial

* John LaPorte Given, Making a Newspaper (Henry Holt, 1907), 1.

RELEASE DATE MAY 20 with availability in print, e-book and for library ordering.