Mark Levin on the American media and his new book 'Unfreedom of the Press'

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Mark Levin on the American media and his new book 'Unfreedom of the Press'

Host of 'Life, Liberty & Levin' examines the relationship between U.S. presidents and the press.

This is a rush transcript from "Special Report with Bret Baier," May 20, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

BRET BAIER, ANCHOR: From instant alerts on your smartphone, to website after website providing updates and news bulletins, Americans are bombarded by information every day. In a new book called "Unfreedom of the Press," radio host, bestselling author, and host of "Life, Liberty, and Levin," Mark Levin delves into the history of the American press and his take on its current state.

MARK LEVIN, AUTHOR OF 'UNFREEDOM OF THE PRESS': Freedom of the press was included in the First Amendment because this country wouldn't exist but for the early patriot press. But for the newspapers and particularly the pamphleteers, there wouldn't have been an American Revolution on there wouldn't be an America.

BAIER: And over the decades Levin argues the press evolved in cycles.

LEVIN: You had a party press period where newspapers started to align themselves with one party or another, one candidate or another, one cause or another, and they did so transparently. You have, for example, newspapers today, The Arkansas Democrat, it's obvious who they aligned with. The Arizona Republic used to be The Arizona Republican.

At the turn of the last century we had the progressive era. In the progressive era, like with government and the economy, they decided, you know what, we need to professionalize all this. And the way we we're going to professionalize all of this is a relative handful of elites need to decide what the news is, interpret the news, and reveal it to the American people, because the American people are either too busy or too stupid to understand what is going on.

And then what happened really in the '50s and '60a that took a hard left turn by embracing progressivism, by embracing mostly the Democrat Party agenda, and by bracing social activism. You can't just report the news, whatever that is, you can't just be objective, whatever that is. You need to be on a mission, a moral mission. You need to push an agenda.

So what do we have today? We have a party press, not a party press with Republicans and Democrats and Green Party. We have a party press largely in this country that represents the Democrat Party. You have The New York Times that runs with an anonymous op-ed. What's an anonymous op-ed?  Anybody can write an anonymous op-ed. That was news for four or five days.  The great late historian who headed the Library of Congress was a historian and at the University of Chicago, Boorstin, back in 1961, he called it what it is. The president calls it fake news. He called it pseudo-events.  These are events that are manufactured with one on top of the other.

BAIER: What would you say to critics who would say, listen, there are reporters out there that are bringing forward stories that would not -- we would not know had they not done the reporting, and that the critics who say the president sometimes calls fake news a story that he just doesn't like?

LEVIN: I'm sorry to upset all the media folks out there when the president accuses them of fake news. When you look at the history of presidents and the media, this president has been very, very tame. He's been incredibly passive. Back when John Adams, the great founder, was president of the United States, he put in place what was called the Sedition Act. And you know what he did, Bret? He started shutting down newspapers and locking up journalists. Do know who else did? Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War - - 300 newspapers were shut down, scores of journalists were imprisoned. He gave the authority to the Secretary of War to do it. They would monitor the telegraph system where all the information was coming and going from news organizations.

People might say that was the Civil War. OK, I will give you Woodrow Wilson. Woodrow Wilson had a new Sedition Act of 1917 in which he put journalists in prison and shut down newspapers. I'll give you another one, Franklin Roosevelt. Franklin Roosevelt, when he came into the office, the FCC, the licenses that they gave out were a two-year term. He made them a six-month term. He put one of his political hacks in charge to make it abundantly clear that radio broadcasts better step in line or they're not going to get their license renewed. He sicced the IRS on the owner of The Inquirer. His wife Eleanor Roosevelt sicced the IRS on the Gannett News Service. I could go on, with John Kennedy and LBJ.

BAIER: So you are saying in contrast?

LEVIN: Donald Trump has done none of this stuff. Look at Obama.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

THEN-PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I complain plenty about Fox News.

(LAUGHTER)

OBAMA: You never heard me threaten to shut them down or call them enemies of the people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEVIN: Obama's sicced the FBI and the Justice Department on your news agency and James Rosen, on James Risen of the New York Times, on 20 reporters from the Associated Press, threatening to put them in prison.  When it comes to abuse of power, this president when it comes to the press has been really quite easy going on the press.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Look at all of them back there. Fake news.

Fake news.

All of those people back there, we call them the fake news.

Such fake news, such phony stories.

It's fake, it's corrupt. But we've got to live with it, right?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEVIN: They may not like him, what he is saying verbally, but he has not used the instrumentalities of government the way many past presidents, great presidents, did.

BAIER: I always talk about the start of Fox News.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good morning. Welcome to Fox News Channel.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: Rupert Murdoch came forward with this network. It was thought to be a niche business. It turned out the niche was half the country who really had a problem with the way news was being covered. Objective news, do you think it's lost?

LEVIN: Objective newest is the goal. Getting a 1600 on the SAT is a goal.  Being as wonderful a human being as you can, a father, a mother, is the goal. But if that is not the goal, then obviously you won't ever get close to the goal.

What I am arguing here is for the vast majority of newsrooms in this country that is not the objective. More and more opinion is being dressed up as news, and you have more and more news anchors we you can't tell if they are opinion anchors or if they're news anchors. And this is a grave danger. Back in 1942 there was a big study done by the media about the media, and the great blaring alarm that they set off was make sure you separate news from opinion. You can have both, but you need to separate them.

The free press exists for people like free speech. It's supposed to inform the people about what's taking place. And these various platforms, they are eventually going to disappear or they won't matter. New technologies, new platforms will replace them, things we can't even think of right now.

BAIER: As we get ready to head into yet another election season, what do you think of the role of the press?

LEVIN: I think it has a lot of power even though it's often wrong, and even time it's often defeated. The media didn't want Trump to win in the first place. They lost. They lost in 2016, there just may be enough Americans who say no to it. I just want your audience and the nation to understand, these men and women in the media or of flesh and blood. They are not more noble than the rest of us. They are not smarter than the rest of us. And so what I'm trying to do with this book is have a national discussion, not so much with the media but with my fellow citizens about our history, about our First Amendment, about our freedom of the press, and what we're going to do about it, and what we need to do about it.

BAIER: The book is "Unfreedom of the Press." Mark Levin, we appreciate it.

LEVIN: God bless. Thank you, sir.

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