Moderator: Kevin Goldberg, Vice President, Freedom Forum

Panelists: András Pethő, Executive Director, Direkt36; Angele Latham, First Amendment Reporter, USA TODAY and The Tennessean

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity. Time codes refer to the session video.

[00:01] Kevin Goldberg

Thank you. I'm Kevin Goldberg. I am vice president and First Amendment expert at Freedom Forum, and I'm going to set up this conversation on the front lines of press freedom. I'll start with something I've taken away as a theme from the day, which is the disconnect between what people think about the First Amendment and what they actually know and believe when it comes down to it. I can barely see you in the lights, but this was a theme of what you said and of some of the other presentations, and we've seen a lot of that at Freedom Forum as well. We have our own survey out, and we'll have a QR code up at the end of the session where you can look at it. It was just put out last week. It's called "The First Amendment: Where America Stands." As with every year, we found that 91% of Americans we surveyed say the First Amendment is vital to America. But this year we had a very shocking result: a massive jump in the question that asked whether they think the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment go too far. It jumped from 13% to 24% this year.

[01:10] We also see some encouraging, but also discouraging, results when it comes to press freedom. One of the discouraging results is that only 30% of people could name freedom of the press as one of the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment. In fact, only 11% could name all five freedoms without help, and one in four can't name any. And freedom of the press was not viewed as very essential: 3% said it was the most essential. So we do have this disconnect, as we've been seeing with other surveys and other conversations, but that's why we're here. One of the things we try to do at Freedom Forum to bridge that is to engage people around the First Amendment, not only in conversations like this but out in the public and in the press. And that's where I start by introducing Angele. She is a Freedom Forum First Amendment reporter here at The Tennessean. We have five of these around the country—at The Tennessean, the Tallahassee Democrat, IndyStar, The Arizona Republic, and USA TODAY—as part of our First Amendment Reporters initiative. Her entire beat is the First Amendment. She finds the stories in Tennessee, she talks to the people in Tennessee, and she reports the First Amendment news in Tennessee. We've had this conversation before about what it's like to be a First Amendment reporter, or just a reporter, in this time.

[02:31] We've done this at a number of universities, where we'll bring in a journalist who is a student from one of the school publications and talk to them about their community. But this is a different community. This is the Global Free Speech Summit. So we looked outward this time, and someone suggested, let's get a reporter from Hungary. I thought that was a great idea, because just as we were setting this up, I had seen András Pethő from Direkt36 on a Zoom for the International Center for Journalists, where I'm on an advisory board, and he had a great conversation about press freedom in Hungary. So I said, I've got just the guy. It worked. We're here. Let's go.

I want to start with a view from where each of you sits. How would you describe the state of press freedom in your country today? Not in the abstract, but in terms of how it affects your work as a journalist. András, for an American audience that maybe doesn't fully understand what has happened to independent media in Hungary, what does diminished press freedom actually look like in your day-to-day work?

[03:34] András Pethő

Thank you so much for having me. It was a lucky coincidence that I was participating in that discussion organized by ICFJ. Of course, in Hungary this April we had a big political change, when Viktor Orbán, who was in power for 16 years, was defeated at the polls. So we have a new government, and that changed the situation for journalists as well. What I can tell you about Hungary for the 16 years under Orbán—I always emphasized that it was not as bad as, you know, it was never Turkey, certainly not Russia or Belarus. I could name a lot of countries where it's much more difficult and much more dangerous to work as a journalist. But it doesn't mean the situation in Hungary was ideal, or close to ideal. There was still a price to pay for independent journalists. For example, I lost my job, because the news organization I was working for at the time came under pressure from the government, and I didn't want to submit myself to censorship.

[05:00] So I left, and then we had to set up our own organization. That's how Direkt36, the investigative reporting center I run, was born. And then we were constantly subjected to smear campaigns and propaganda campaigns. We were called foreign agents, traitors, everything. Two of my colleagues were surveilled with Pegasus spyware. So it was not a pleasant environment to work in, to put it like that. It's still too early to tell how the new era will unfold. We have a new political party in power that promised to restore press freedom, and they've done things that point in that direction. But the new prime minister, Péter Magyar, is clearly not a fan of journalists. He can sometimes be quite aggressive. He's on social media all the time, and he criticizes journalists—which is fine, because what we do is totally fine to scrutinize. But we'll see how this relationship evolves. I think it's still too early to tell.

[06:30] Kevin Goldberg

Angele, ostensibly we have much stronger constitutional protections for speech and press. But does that necessarily mean you feel secure doing your work day to day?

[06:42] Angele Latham

Like you said, press freedom here is far more protected than it is in other countries across the world. We really can't overlook the protections we have here as journalists. Sometimes I feel horrible complaining about the obstacles I face, especially when I come to incredible panels like this, because there are so many journalists who are like, oh yeah, I got out of prison two months ago, and I'm like, I was arguing with a cop last week, and then I walked home. But you can't ignore it when you are walking into increasingly turbulent waters, both in your own beat and as a profession. There are different journalism ecosystems that are years down the railroad tracks from where we are, and there are very clear signs that we are walking into much more oppressive times for press freedom. There are so many instances we could discuss. I know I'm preaching to the choir in this room, but the recent incursions on press freedom are something we really can't ignore, and they point to much worse times ahead of us if we don't stand up and talk about how detrimental that is to democracy as a whole.

[07:49] Kevin Goldberg

András, talking about the backsliding—I'm sure people imagine something in Hungary where Orbán came in and it was a massive sea change. But it's not like that, is it? How does the degradation of press freedom happen?

[08:14] András Pethő

I think there was a lot of myth around the Orbán regime. I remember I was invited on a radio show from California—I participated online—and before the show started, they asked me, are you safe? Are you okay? And I was like, yes, I'm safe. We were never in physical danger. But when Orbán came back to power in 2010—he was already prime minister between 1998 and 2002—it was clear that taking the media under control was a priority for him and for his party. One of the first pieces of legislation they introduced to Parliament totally redesigned the whole media regulatory framework. They set up a new authority, and they appointed people who were loyal to them. At that time, I didn't really understand the significance of that, because that body didn't impact my daily work. But later it became clear that that was how they took the whole sector, the whole industry, under control. They controlled the regulatory body. So when two companies wanted to merge, if this authority didn't like that for political reasons, they could block it. And of course they decided about the radio licenses and so forth.

[09:51] So in hindsight, it all made sense. They first went for the low-hanging fruit. In Hungary we have what is called public service media, public broadcasters. That was always under some kind of government control, but they took it under even stronger control, and it took maybe one or two years to transform that into a mouthpiece for the government. Then they went after private media companies. Hungary is part of the EU—again, it wasn't Turkey or Russia—so they had to pretend it was still a democratic country with the rule of law. So it was not directly Viktor Orbán, not directly the government, that did that job. It was friends of Orbán who bought media companies, and they either transformed them into propaganda outlets or they just shut them down, as happened with several outlets. So they redesigned the whole landscape in just a few years. It didn't happen overnight, but it took only a few years. That was also because Orbán was a kind of pioneer, and Hungary was a member of the EU. Now, if you look at other countries, I think things happen much faster, because they've already learned how Orbán did it.

[11:29] Kevin Goldberg

Let's see: pressure to withhold approval for mergers, pressure regarding licenses, friends of the person in charge creating their own media companies, or pressuring through propaganda campaigns. That doesn't sound familiar at all. When people ask me what I think is happening with regard to press freedom in this country—we are nonpartisan at Freedom Forum, and I am very cautious about not taking sides and looking at facts. But these are facts. So, Angele, what do you see? You're not a national writer—you do write on important national issues, but you are a local writer, and that's the beauty of your beat. You are talking to your community. What do you see in your community in terms of similarities, maybe, or differences? Do you see that in Tennessee?

[12:29] Angele Latham

Absolutely. I can't see all of y'all very well, but I don't know how many of y'all are from Tennessee. I saw one hand. That's good. Something that's really interesting about Tennessee's political landscape—this sometimes sounds very inflammatory, but it really is true—is that Tennessee is used as a testing ground for a lot of political ideas and political actions. A lot of laws are tested here, because the state has a very heavy Republican supermajority, so it's not hard to get things passed, even if they're a little shaky on the legal grounds. And so we see a lot of very—

[13:11] Kevin Goldberg

Pioneering.

[13:13] Angele Latham

—laws that get passed here. Especially over the past few years, that has really increased this very turbulent landscape for a lot of journalists who are trying to cover these issues. I can just point to the past three years. We had the Tennessee Three in 2023. That was, by the way, a year into this job for me.

[13:36] Kevin Goldberg

You're all familiar with this, right? The Tennessee Three. Give it just a second. It's really interesting.

[13:40] Angele Latham

The TL;DR version: we had The Covenant School mass shooting here in March 2023, and we were on the ground for that, of course. It was in the middle of the legislative session. The next day, we had some of the largest protests that have ever happened in Tennessee descend on the state Capitol, protesting for gun reform. Three Democratic legislators protested on the House floor. Two were expelled; one was almost expelled but held on. They were expelled for protesting for gun reform. It became a huge national issue, because Tennessee has very unrestricted gun access. So it was a huge commentary on gun reform and, essentially, protest rights in Tennessee. That issue has reverberated through the many political waves we've had over the past few years. Protest rights at the state Capitol are becoming increasingly restricted, and that's actually a really big part of my coverage here. Every single legislative session, January through April or May, we cover a lot of very tiny baby steps that are used to restrict how people access their government and how people are able to speak up against their government. I could go on about that forever.

[14:50] Kevin Goldberg

And by expelled, you mean they were expelled from the legislature, not expelled from the Capitol for the day.

[14:56] Angele Latham

Expelled. Gone. They have since been reelected, to the dismay of many a member. So it's just one of the symptoms of how press freedom is increasingly not seen as a constitutional pillar of American society—which it very literally is, by the text of the Constitution—but is increasingly seen as a political tool that can be restricted or encouraged depending on what you want the people to see. There is an increasingly instilled attitude that press freedom is something you can dismiss if you just don't want coverage, or if you just don't respect the journalistic integrity involved. It's becoming something that's very easy for politicians to dismiss, and that's making our job a lot harder, because we're seeing these tiny little baby steps toward not being able to report with fairness on the area we're in. And it's easy to dismiss when it's on the local scale, because people are like, oh, it's just this one thing.

I was speaking with a gentleman named Dave Gould. He's the publisher of Main Street Media, which is one of Middle Tennessee's largest local paper networks, and he is being sued by a Tennessee sports association because he requested some records. This lawsuit dropped two days ago. He is being sued because he requested records. I was talking to him yesterday about it, and he said, this might seem little—he just wanted a letter about a student athlete at a high school—but this is important, because this is where it starts. If you can't access public records, we're going to fight this. You have to start with the small stuff. And that kind of underpins this entire discussion: it starts in little ways that you don't notice, until it turns into really big issues that you can't avoid.

[16:52] Kevin Goldberg

Because you cover the First Amendment full time, you have a unique window into how people understand these freedoms, or at least interact with them. Give me a couple of things Americans tend to get right and wrong about the First Amendment, but specifically press freedom.

[17:10] Angele Latham

People love the First Amendment. We're on a good foundation there. I say this all the time, but this is the only beat I've ever had where, when I walk into a room and say I'm a reporter, people are interested. Most reporters, you walk in and people go, oh God, no reporters here. No one's ever happy to see you. But when I say I'm a First Amendment reporter, people across the board are very interested, because it is a very unifying concept. People love the First Amendment.

[17:41] Kevin Goldberg

A big hit at parties.

[17:41] Angele Latham

Big hit at parties. I start talking about Supreme Court precedent, and people eat that up. But it's really interesting, because people really care about freedom of speech, and that's usually where it stops. They're like, oh, freedom of speech. And I'm like, yeah, there are four more in there, and they're really cool. People have this fascinating view where they care very much about the First Amendment, but—and you could use this sentence to describe any of politics—when you start saying, well, it applies to things you don't like, they're like, oh, no. So it makes the discussion really interesting when you're trying to encourage neutrality in anything, or saying, hey, you've got to think about precedent. People frequently think hate speech is not covered by the First Amendment. That is something I frequently run into. They're like, no, that's not allowed. And I'm like, no, it is very much protected by the First Amendment—and who gets to decide what hate speech is? That's not popular at parties. It also flows into separation of church and state. Anyone who traveled here, you're in the Bible Belt. People do not like talking about separation of church and state. That is where I get the most hate mail, every time I write an article about it. People are not happy to talk about that, but they're excited about the First Amendment. So it's a really weird line you've got to walk, where people are really excited about these rights, but as soon as you start pointing out that the rights have to go both ways, that's when people don't like it. That is a really difficult part of this beat: trying to get across that this idea that is popular with everyone, you need to support for everyone.

[19:23] Kevin Goldberg

András, you don't have a singular beat on the First Amendment—you don't have the First Amendment. But what is the general attitude in Hungary toward freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and how has it changed now with the change in leadership? Has it gotten better? Have people gotten complacent? Where did they start and where are they?

[19:45] András Pethő

One of the most inspiring, even uplifting, experiences under Orbán was how, especially in the final years, a big part of the public turned toward us again, toward journalists. They paid attention to us and they listened to us. That happened partly because of what Orbán and his people did. They took over a big part of the media industry. They built an ecosystem with hundreds of outlets—digital, print, and literally all local. We have county newspapers, and all the county newspapers were controlled by his friends, and almost all the radio stations. And it was not even like—I know you have Fox News, or MSNBC, or MS NOW, I think it's called now—which is leaning right or left. This was Soviet-style propaganda, really. There was no autonomy in the system. These outlets, in one voice, were just spreading the government's messages. But that gave us an opportunity, because they also left a big part of the market for us, for real journalists, for independent journalists. Of course, the only space left for us was the digital space, because all the other sectors were controlled by the government. But luckily, the audience was also moving toward the digital space.

[21:37] So that's why I say that especially in the last five or six years, our reach—the number of people we reached with articles, or even more so through podcasts, videos, and documentaries—grew exponentially. Last year, we made a documentary about Viktor Orbán's family and their businesses and the corruption surrounding Orbán. That documentary is an hour long, a long-form piece, and it now has more than 4.3 million views in a country of 10 million. So you can imagine what kind of reach it had. Or, in Hungary we have a system where people can donate 1% of their personal income tax to civil society organizations. We are also a nonprofit, and we work together with a foundation to get these donations. This year there were more than 30,000 organizations competing for that 1%. We are a small outlet, 12 people, and we finished in 13th position. That gives you an idea how much financial support we had, but also moral support and the attention of the people. And that was because we stayed true to the mission. We were not ideological. We were just doing the job. We were reporting. We were telling important stories.

[23:23] Kevin Goldberg

It's interesting. We were talking out in the hall earlier, and you said something offhand that resonated with me: there are no print publications really doing political journalism in Hungary right now. It's primarily, exclusively digital.

[23:38] András Pethő

Yes. There is a tabloid daily, but no political daily.

[23:45] Kevin Goldberg

Interesting. Okay, András, I'm going to do something corny here for a second. Look at Angele and tell her the one thing she needs to know about press freedom from you. Or just look at the audience. What is the one thing we need to know in the United States about preserving press freedom?

[24:07] András Pethő

What I learned through this experience under Orbán is that press freedom is a necessary ingredient for democracy, but it's not enough. I think there are journalists and media organizations that made the mistake of positioning themselves like, okay, we are going to save democracy, or we're going to save you from whoever. That's not going to happen, especially in the new information age we're living in. The reality is that I think our power and influence has been diminishing, because we are not gatekeepers anymore as journalists. We have to compete for the attention of the public just like influencers do, or Netflix does, or Spotify, whatever. So it's a totally different game. We have to find our role, our position, in this changing environment. But we still have a role. That's what I learned, and that was really reassuring as well.

[25:29] Kevin Goldberg

The theme of this year's conference is "be bold." It's easy to say, but potentially much harder to do. Let's talk about what being bold means to you as journalists. I'll start with András. What does "be bold" mean when journalism can carry significant personal or professional consequences? Not that it can't for you, Angele, and we will hear from you. But from your experience, what does it mean to be bold when you have so much at stake?

[26:01] András Pethő

My colleagues and I were often approached by people who told us, oh, how brave you are, how courageous this is, what you are doing. Of course it feels good, but I also felt a little uncomfortable, because I never felt courageous. I think courage means that you do something despite the fear you have, and I was never afraid. But one of the things I like most about journalism—I think it's a beautiful profession—is finding stories that nobody has told before. It's an intellectually very exciting and rewarding process, and of course it's a good public service. But it has this peculiar quality: the beauty stays only if you do it responsibly and professionally and independently. As soon as you give up those values, you compromise yourself, and you allow someone else, especially people in power, to tell you what you can write about and what kind of questions you can ask. That beauty goes away immediately, and in fact it turns into something really ugly. So that's something we always have to keep in mind. We have our values, we have our principles,

[27:36] and you cannot cross that line, because it doesn't really matter if you only cross it a little. It's already broken. You cannot put it back together. That's why, when I left my news organization in 2014, when it came under pressure, I had a final conversation with the CEO of that company, who was telling me not to leave. I told him I cannot stay. I left because we came under pressure and he wanted to censor our coverage. And I told him, there is no way I can do that. What are we going to do next, when you want to censor us again? So that's what I think being bold, or courageous, means: you have to stick to your principles and values, because that's the only thing you have in this business.

[28:48] Kevin Goldberg

Angele, your pressure is more public in nature than legal. What does it mean to be bold in your position, especially in a community like the one you're covering—a very local community, where people know you, they're going to see you out, and maybe remember you as a reporter? What does it look like for you? You've told me some stories, but tell them.

[29:07] Angele Latham

It's very similar to your answer, in that it matters in the little things that you do. I firmly believe in the saying that the arc of the world will always bend toward justice, and I'm deeply committed to always taking the high road in situations—partially because I just like being right. Why would I report something, why would I do something, if I'm going to be wrong? Then I just look stupid. But I genuinely care about this beat. I genuinely care about the work we do and the impact of the First Amendment, of people's right to speak and right to show up. The inherent importance of these rights is only protected if you dedicate yourself to protecting it in the little ways. There was a gentleman who was arrested last year for posting comments on Facebook about Charlie Kirk.

[30:08] Kevin Goldberg

We talked about it yesterday.

[30:10] Angele Latham

Excellent. I was actually the one who broke the story. I just happened to find his arrest record a few hours after, and I was like, oh my God. So I was writing that, and we kept hammering them about it, because it was egregious. It was the first arrest in the wave of post-Kirk firings and everything that was happening. It might be the only arrest, but it was definitely the first. We stayed on them. We were hammering them for answers. Then I got a text late one night from a local legislator—I won't name him—and he was like, oh my God, I just read your coverage. I'm going to write the DA in the morning. The next day, the man was released. That man doesn't know me. That's fine. But it's one of those examples that the coverage matters, even if the people it matters to will never know who I am. He doesn't know me, but because I kept publishing these stories, it got the attention of the people who needed it.

At the last legislative session, there were a lot of increasing rules about how people can view what's happening in the people's house. People are being kicked out. Protesters are being removed far more than they ever have been. There's now a ticketing system if you want to go in and see legislative action. And frequently at these protests,

[31:25] extra law enforcement is brought in. I don't know the training, I don't know what goes on, but there seems to be a misunderstanding that press are supposed to be removed as well. That does not fly. Press are not supposed to be removed, and I do not let them. In the last session, there was a wave of law enforcement physically trying to push us out of the wings of the Capitol because we were trying to cover it. This was during the redistricting session, so it was very heated. It's moments like that that I wish I could bottle up and share with people, because the First Amendment and the Constitution aren't ethereal notions, where it's like, academically, oh, we need to protect this, this is important. These are very real things for people. I just wish I could bottle this scene up for you. You're standing in the gallery of the press hall, looking into the legislative session. The doors are locked. The protesters are to your right. The wall is vibrating because people are screaming. They're yelling and they're stomping and they're clapping, and there are these loud buzzers going off, because they're trying to disrupt it. People are screaming in opposition to this vote that's happening very quickly in front of you. The press have to be there. This vote happens fast. There were screens outside that were supposed to show the proceedings to the people who were locked out,

[32:46] but the screens were turning on and off all day, so no one knew what the vote was. The press inside were the only people seeing what the vote was. And this wall of law enforcement is physically trying to push us out, because they were told to clear the gallery. I remember standing there, yelling back at this cop: I'm not leaving. We have to be here. Protesters are being pushed out, and they're yelling, "We love the press!" as they're being pushed out of the gallery. Standing there, you're like, oh, these people need this. This isn't some ethereal notion where we're like, oh, I hope this goes well for the country. This is their connection to a government that is becoming increasingly hard to see. So I stood there, and I got the vote. We stood there reporting. I could see my colleague on the other side of the gallery, and we're taking notes, and I'm rubbing my arm raw as I'm breathing, because I'm bumping into this guy's gun belt. You just have to stand your ground. It's these little moments where you have to stand there and dedicate yourself: press freedom matters, and I'm going to stand here and defend it.

[33:50] Kevin Goldberg

This is the content we bring her in for. That's a great story. Thank you. I'm going to throw you a bit of a curveball, something that was not on our question list, but I think you're both up to it. One of the things we learned from our survey this year is that there are some very interesting attitudes that vary based on age and even education level. As I said at the beginning, our baseline was that 30% of people can name press freedom without aid, but 3% see it as most essential. Among current college students, fewer could name press freedom—it was down to about 26%. And of course, for people with an advanced degree, all of the knowledge went way up, to about 47%. Interestingly enough, among current college students, 11% said press freedom was the most essential. I'm trying to figure that one out. At almost four times the level of the general population, current college students think press freedom is the most essential. András, is this something you see in Hungary, a divide among generations? Have you noticed any of it?

[35:09] András Pethő

Yes. We see a lot of enthusiasm among younger people, younger generations. I don't buy this notion I sometimes hear from colleagues in Hungary and even abroad, how frustrated they are with their Gen Z colleagues. I'm not. I have wonderful young colleagues. They're really good, very committed. Of course they speak their minds, but that's fine; that's how it should be. And I think you can reach younger people, but maybe you need different channels and different formats. We really managed to break through to them when we started making more things for YouTube—these documentaries and the podcasts. I like bragging about this to my friends. I'm 48, so obviously I'm not young anymore. But last year, somehow I ended up at a music festival with some friends, and we went to a concert by a really popular Hungarian hip-hop artist. I was standing on the sidelines, not in the crowd. And a guy in his 20s came up to me and said, are you with Direkt36? I said yes. He said, keep up the good work. And I told my friends, look, did you see this? Did you hear this? Of course, I couldn't interview him on how he knows about Direkt36. I'm kind of sure it wasn't one of those 15,000-word investigations we sometimes publish. It was probably the podcast, or probably he recognized me because I was in one of the films. But it doesn't really matter how you reach young people, as long as it's good journalism and good stories. Then it's fine.

[37:36] Kevin Goldberg

Angele, you and I have spoken to a number of groups, but you also interact, I'm sure, with younger people—Gen Z, millennials—in the community. What do you make of that? Why do they love press freedom, apparently?

[37:49] Angele Latham

I'm going to give a pessimistic answer and then my optimistic answer, because I don't know which it is. Pessimistically, I wonder if it's because, stepping into this current media atmosphere, there's a lot of blurring of the lines between what is news and what is an influencer talking to you about news. The number of times I have seen a story I have sweat and bled over get 200 clicks, and then some internet personality reads it aloud and gets millions of views—I'm like, what is going on here? I wonder if there's some sort of shift. I'm not mad about the support; that's great. But I do wonder if it's support based on a shift in understanding of what we consider news.

[38:35] That's my pessimistic answer. Optimistically, I'm hoping it's because of the proliferation of media and the greater access college students have to all these new sources, especially as journalists try to diversify how we present our news—TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, X, everything. I wonder if they have a broader approach to news, and perhaps see just how much work goes into it and how much impact there is. I'm hoping that will translate into an appreciation for how much of a role the media plays in shaping their lives. There is no denying that the lives of college students, Gen Z, probably Gen Alpha as well—it depends on where you put the line—are shaped by the media around them. So I'm hoping that translates into an appreciation not just for media but for press freedom. But I think that's going to be seen in the coming years. I really don't know where to go with that data. It's probably the first option, but I'm going to be optimistic.

[39:42] Kevin Goldberg

We apparently have about one minute left, so we'll do one very last quick question, because I want to leave it on a high note. You started to get at it. András, after all this, what leaves you optimistic for the future of journalism, free speech, free press? Pick any, pick all. What leaves you optimistic right now?

[40:02] András Pethő

I can just reiterate what I said about the 16 years of pretty difficult times under Orbán. It was also an uplifting experience. And I'm very optimistic. Maybe we'll use different formats and different channels, but I think there is a hunger, there is an interest, in real stories and truth.

[40:29] Kevin Goldberg

Angele.

[40:29] Angele Latham

Something that brings me a lot of hope is actually talking to you and seeing the arc of Hungary's political journey. It's really easy to get sad, and really easy to feel absolutely overwhelmed, looking at the landscape of American politics and American press freedom right now. We're seeing an unprecedented number of incursions on journalistic access, journalistic integrity—anything to do with having a robust press. It's really easy to get overwhelmed by that. But it's encouraging talking to you and looking at that pattern. Like I mentioned at the beginning, looking down the railroad track, there is a light at the end of the tunnel—or there can be, if we hold on to this belief that having a robust, supported, appreciated, free press is what's going to carry us to better representation in government, a freer government, and a better democracy as a whole. And looking at the data, people love the First Amendment. We have the foundation for keeping this appreciation. We already have the people's support. We just have to make sure we communicate to people about the importance of it, how to carry it into their lives, and how to actually act on it.

[41:43] Kevin Goldberg

We're happy to continue the conversation outside. We are at time, and I urge you to look at the Freedom Forum survey. There's the QR code; go ahead and scan it, or you can just come ask me. Thank you very much. We look forward to getting through to the other side and moving forward. Thanks.