you can follow the senate live on c-span2 and the house on c-span when members return monday, october 23. house speaker paul ryan led a congressional delegation to puerto rico where congresswoman jenniffer gonzalez-colon tweeted these photos of speaker ryan, g.o.p. conference chair cathy mcmorris rogers, appropriations committee leaders and the admiral of the coast guard. with the message -- let's get to work. and congresswoman mcmorris rodgers tweeted this peckture 's

criticism of what he calls fake news. are we a country still trying to figure out what freedom of speech is? guest: the argument never seems to end. now with this administration. for example, the president's statement just last week that nbc ought to lose its television license because it has broadcast material of which he disapproved . it is the latest example of the first amendment being threatened . tryinga of the president to inflict capital punishment on the network is unthinkable. it is also illegal. the fcc does not regulate

network and there are a lot of legal protections that would keep this from happening, not just the first amendment. it is a disturbing example of the willingness of the president to go very far down the line in advocating activity by the government which on its face would violate the first amendment. host: you mentioned the president's tweets and comments targeting nbc news. here's is a tweet from just this morning. are fake news, the president wrote this morning at around 7:10. the public is just beginning to figure it out. what do you think of the term fake news? guest: what the president means by fake news is news he does not like. news that disturbs him or angers him.

it is not fake news to tell the truth. onis not fake news to report what people in positions of authority say are happening. inaccurateources are , sometimes journalists are inaccurate. the underlying theory of the first amendment is that it is not for presidents to decide what the news is. that is for an independent press and an independent public to pass judgment on. have does the president the freedom of speech to call out what he thinks is bias in the news? guest: the certainly does. he has first amendment rights. he is the leader of the country, he should be speaking out when he thinks things are wrong or

things ought to be done to fix things he thinks are wrong. at the same time, it should not be too much to ask that he respect the first amendment rights of others. that he accept the proposition that he is a valid topic for criticism, even if he happens to think the criticism is not fair. the firste core of amendment. it is an amendment designed to andre that the government the highest person or people in the government are not the ones to decide what is said and what is not said. host: you talk about license renewal, can you talk about the historic use of threats to license renewal? broadcasters are licensed by the government.

the idea is more people want to broadcast then there is room for them on the spectrum, so the government has to play the role of deciding who gets a license. that is less important these days because of the importance of cable. cable is not regulated. broadcasters have needed licenses and the question has always been if they need a license, what role does the government play, what role can the government play in deciding if they are any good at being broadcasters? where we have come through the there is somey level of corruption or misconduct or the like which could result in a license being lifted by the fcc. exception, thehe

norm is broadcasters, particularly when they are reporting about news, particularly when they are dealing with public matters such as the conflict of the president, are absolutely free as journalists on "the new york times" or "the washington post" or the wall street journal. if it were any other way we would imperil freedom of speech in america. host: what you think the future is on this freedom of speech issue in light of what we have seen from president trump? are you concerned about it? i am not concerned that nbc's license or other broadcasters license are going to be lifted. i do not think that is going to happen. i don't think anything is going to happen in the fcc. we do have a history.

the nixon administration tried very hard to kill some of the pressed -- some of the press reporting because they made threats, sometimes privately and publicly of antitrust action. people talked to people in the network and made threats to them. one never knows what the bottom line is after that happens. in that time, it was real and it was dangerous and it should not have happened. i do not believe that anything is going to happen in this area, whatever know what and -- any administration might do if it is frustrated enough, angry enough, and the like.

that is particularly so with this president who seems to take so personally any criticism of him and his administration. host: floyd abrams, constitutional attorney, author of the book "the soul of the first amendment." we'll take your calls in your questions. ,epublicans, (202) 748-8001 andcrats, (202) 748-8000 independents (202) 748-8002. i think the first amendment is important. it defends the rights of the people's free speech, not just the press. these people that are kneeling during the national anthem, they are not protesting the anthem or

are protesting the violence going on in america against a certain group of people. that is the point. because it makes people uncomfortable to talk about that, that even more needs to be the point. --avoid the point host: go ahead. listener isnk the quite right. let me say a legal thing first. the first amendment applies only to the government. the first amendment is a limitation on the government, on the president, on the congress. is a first amendment spirit which we take account of and which matters a lot. when football players want to they areant to kneel,

in the tradition of people recognizing first amendment rights. if the government tried to stop them, it would violate the constitution. it does not do that when an but itries to stop them, gets close in this sense, and just the sense you are raising. they are exercising a right to protest. they are engaging in speech and it is the sort of speech, even though it is not words, it is the sort of expression which is at the core of first amendment protections. host: if a player is fired for kneeling, what they have a first amendment case against the owner of the nfl for firing them? , because the first amendment applies only to the government. one can make an argument that if the government pressures and owner to do the firing, that

could possibly violate the first amendment. speaking generally, if an owner fires -- if any employer fires an employee for what the employee says, that does not violate the first amendment. it sometimes violates state law, it may violate union contracts or employer/employee relationships, but the bill of focuseds deliberately on protection against the government. , in thisot provide case, what that means is it is -- it makes it all the more important for people to exercise their first amendment rights to speak out and have their say. host: nevada, line for republicans. go ahead. mr. abrams, i have a

comment and a question. you said the fcc does not have the right to regulate what is on tv. i know 30 or 40 years ago they had more power to do that. i would like to ask your question -- do you know how many andle on cnn and msnbc other networks have journalism degrees? not very many. these people are pundits. they spout out anything they want, they do not have a journalism degree, a do not study journalism. it is a joke. you are talking about the constitution. why don't people look at who is spouting out this garbage that is on tv. they do not have the credentials, they are pundits. they do not know what they are talking about. people like you and other people want to defend these people and they are idiots. host: do you think all

journalists should be licensed by the government? caller: they don't have to be licensed through the government that they should have a journalism degree and know what they are talking about and know the talking points they are talking about instead of being pundits that want to put out whatever the american public at the time feels like is best for them, especially on the left side, they want to push their agenda and make everything it is all wrong, and they do not even know what they're talking about. toot: i think you think well of journalism schools. not a lot of our best journalists, including people whose work he would admire went to journalism school. people, are very top and not just pundits, not just people mouthing off have become

journalists after going to college. in earlier times, without going to college. i agree with you, they should be judged by what they do. they should be judged by their abilities, they should be judged by the quality of their work. i do not have the same view that you do about the nature of that quality. you are a lot more down on them that i am. that is what the first amendment is about. we can disagree on that. wantnk you ought not to all or most journalists to have gone to journalism school. , iis a useful place to go think studying english, studying history, studying culture, study the arts, all the things people

can get on their own or through college or through graduate bestl are the single backgrounds to have to go to journalism. host: rene is in texas, independent. good morning. with regards to the hollywood efforts to attain assets across the south. to move doctors and lawyers away , and --il rights host: what is the question? caller: what you know about la jolla?

my answer is it is a question but it is not one i can answer. i have no idea. thank you c-span. i would suggest that christmas is coming up, perhaps we could have susan swaim back on thursday. abrams, my point is arts we seeing an infiltration of corporations and to the presidency of the united states. i use barack obama for a quintessential example. his first signing statement as president was to negate the .tanding lawsuit against at&t had pointed-span out that we were being spied

upon by the telecom industry illegally. as a constitutional law scholar, for president obama to have come into office and then grant of forgiveness or to wipe away the wasess of the lawsuit, that basically a takeover by the corporations to protect the corporations from complicity and what we have now are witnessing where the presidency is no longer for the electorate, but is tailored to the corporation. host: i will let you jump in. familiarm not closely with the decision-making process in the white house under president obama about this case. the obama administration was the subject of a good deal of press for a the

good deal of its activities in terms of leak investigations and the like. i am unaware that the administration acted in response to pressure from at&t or other corporations and dropping ongoing litigations or investigations. host: keith in massachusetts, line for republicans. caller: thank you c-span. i'm not worried about the constitutionality of any of this. anywhere youlace can go to without having to listen to politics every day. for people to spend this much money to listen to football or have a relaxing day, to get the hell away from politics. i think this is terrible. i do not care about football

anymore. once aaron hernandez sues for i think itnjuries -- is a shame you cannot even go to a dam game and enjoy yourself. we have politics there, too. host: another place where this free speech discussion has bubbled up is on campus free speech debates, certainly an issue we have seen on college campuses. i wonder your thoughts on that topic and less more you want to add on the nfl? guest: let me talk about the campus first. i think that is a big problem and i think it is a serious problem in terms of an too manyness of students and the administrations of too many colleges and cutting

back who can speak. those days are over or it the problems now is too many students trying to shout down speakers, when speakers are disinvited, people invited to go and appear. sometimes those speakers are theageous and sometimes speaker say things which are wounding to some students. answer, i'mendment not speaking as a lawyer, but the first amendment philosophical answer and the answer isdment core it is better to have more speech than less and better to have more people have a chance to hear and think about and pass judgment on and reject the views and answer the views of people who say the things that are indeed, not just offputting but

outrageous. happening not to be and is happening too often is the stifling of speech on the grounds that it will hurt people's feelings. we have to be stronger than that internally, and stronger than that in terms of protecting the rights of the other students who may want to hear that person speak, however disturbing the message may be. events happense on college campuses and they require a lot of security to maintain order, to make sure there is no clash between the two sides, who should pay for that security? should it be the state and local law enforcement, should it be the colleges, should be the speaker themselves? guest: let me be clear. for the most part, the speaker

is not the one who has the right to appear. the university can decide for itself who appears subject to this proposition. if yesterday groups that make invitations, particularly state universities cannot make a decision about who comes and who does not, based on politics or social views. of paying forrden are ony on the speaker the proponents who invite the speaker is only going to result in less speech and only going to agenda ofa one-sided who can common speak on campus. oughtot think the speaker to pay and i think if a university has a open-door

policy about who comes and speaks, as i think it should, , and i should undertake understand it is painfully financial and otherwise, it should take what other steps are necessary to provide security, most of which ought to be the police or outside entities. the other thing universities have to be prepared to do is to punish students who miss behave or act in a way that prevents their fellow students from hearing, listening, being there, eating safe -- being safe at a speech by someone whose views may be unattractive or awful. paul in indianapolis, indiana, line for independence.

abrams, i was wondering if reporters do not have to go to journalism school, shouldn't they go somewhere where they learn the rules of evidence? i was a cpa for many years and if i used the evidence they presented to come up with a story about the secretary of state calling the president a moron and i had come to that would not only have lost my license, i probably would've been fired. they do not know how to use evidence. i understand that in the united states as opposed to the u.k., the newspapers are held to a much lower standard when it comes to libel that an individual would be. you have to improve intent of great malice if the newspaper present something that is false.

i would like to note that is true, because i know in the u.k. it is much easier to sue a newspaper for libel or slander. guest: absolutely right. in the u.k. it is much easier to sue for libel. we afford much greater protections. 1941 in a u.s. supreme court case in which the question was put a judge put a journalist in jail for saying really bad things about the judge, in that case the u.s. split off from english law and said it almost so many words that nothing was clearer when the first amendment was adopted then that people in the u.s. should have more rights , more protection, of freedom of thegion, of freedom of press, than was ever the case in the united kingdom. the on the ground reality is you

are actually right that there is more protection here for speech. a journalist would go to jail today in england for reporting on a trial and mentioning the prior criminal record of someone in the case, until it is admitted in court. that is withinay the power and authority of a journalist to make that decision as to what is newsworthy. if they have information that is newsworthy, the court system has theake steps to assure juror does not read and is not affected by what the public at large may see. point, we not only have more in the way of free speech rights here, and i want to make clear in response to an

earlier question, not just freedom of the press but free-speech rights for all of us here than anywhere in the world. there are lots of cases in democratic countries -- canada, a very free country, which reflect much less of a willingness to provide robust free speech, free press protections of the sort that we have. we stand alone. one could say for better or worse, and one could say, as a few listeners have suggested, that there is bad journalism that comes out, and we do protect more journalism, good or bad, than any place else in the world. the waywe deal with it, we think about it, the way the first amendment has been read to

view it is that it is better for the public to have more speech and more freedom, even if there , thatsks, and there are speech and that freedom can result in errors being made or, occasionally, things that turn out not to be so. john kelly yesterday at the white house press briefing talked about the relationship between president trump and the press. here's what he had to say. one of his frustrations is you, all of you. not all of you but many of you. guy, but when i read in the morning, i watch tv in the morning, it is astounding to me how much is misreported.

i will give you the benefit of the doubt that you are operating ,ff of context, leaks, whatever but i would offer to you the advice -- maybe develop better sources. some person that works way down inside an office -- just develop some better sources. host: floyd abrams, what did you think about those comments? the press would be delighted to have general kelly as a source. people gather news as best they can from people who hopefully are knowledgeable about what goes on. certainly, the press deserves criticism when it publishes material that is not true. time, what happens

in the white house is so , it bears so directly on our lives and on world peace and on our economy, on our children and the like that we want an aggressive and intrusive press to do their best all the time to search out the truth of what is happening. i am not in a position to argue with general kelly about how often journalists make mistakes. i would say they would be less likely to make mistakes if there was more openness, not by leaks, but more openness by this and other administrations about what is really going on. host: time for just a couple more calls with floyd abrams.

of thek is the soul first amendment. kevin is in california, line for republicans. caller: good morning. the american people trust the news to provide us with information and a higher information age that is going on in the world. i feel it is the duty of the there are few major channels that spread the news to millions of people -- it is the duty of the journalists to provide us with not only information but the true information. the president protects all the constitutional rights of american. be able to make up hocus-pocus about the president of the united states, accused him of treason and not have anything to back it up.

you're on the air on public news where people trust you and value tor word, it is your duty inform the united states, you make up things you cannot back up. i spend a good part of my career representing journalists. you can say i am biased or knowledgeable or maybe both. in my experience, and to my neverdge, it is almost that journalists make up or fabricate confidential sources. it is not a reality. when the president says, for example, that they do, that the sources are not real, he is denying reality. that does not mean the sources

in the sense the sources know the full picture. one of the most important jobs of journalists is to try to work their way through the tangle of toormation that they get come out with as close to ultimate truth as is possible. part of what i think you find offensive is not so much the newsgathering or the reportage, nature ofinions, the the criticism or some of the criticisms of the president to talk about collusion. that is being looked into. there is an outside entity looking into whether there was collusion. worths a topic well

discussing, not just by mr. mueller, but by all of us based on the information we have and the information we can get. , do not accept the proposition i'm not saying that is what you are saying, that i do not accept the proposition that collusion ought to be off-limits. there were certain meetings which we know occurred. tookow that the president a more pro-russian attitude than any candidate for president since henry wallace in 1948. there are a lot of things that make it worth looking into. that is what mr. mueller and his team is doing. it is important, while that goes on, to try to report. you have to be fair.

if you think they're not being fair in their reportage, that is something people can disagree about. what i'm saying is it is a topic that is so important that it is worth continuing focus on, not just by the mueller investigation, but by all of us as citizens, watching and listening and trying to make our own judgments, however tentative, raised on what we can learn. abrams, author of the >> a look at the primetime schedule on c-span networks. starting 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span, president trump announces his decision on the future of the iranian agreement, which was struck during the obama administration with several other countries. with aan2's book tv, visit to several recent book festivals. c-span3, american history

tv, with photojournalists who have documented events in american history. >> everything was devastating fortv, with photojournalists who have him at the end. he was in some ways isolated and alone. emeritus and professor at amherst college and his biography, "gorbachev." >> he trusted the soviet people. he trusted them to follow him where they had never gone, that is, to democratize their country in a few short years. he trusted them to follow him as he moved the country toward a market economy from a command economy. he trusted them to follow him and trust him as he made peace in the cold war against the hated enemy, the united states. he trusted them too much it turns out. >> tonight at 8:00 eastern on c-span's "q&a."