White House says media hecklers are entitled to free speech

The White House said Wednesday that Trump supporters have as much right to free speech as the media does, after crowds heckled reporters again at a Trump rally in Florida.

“While we certainly support freedom of the press, we also support freedom of speech,” said White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. “Those things go hand in hand.”

At a Trump rally Tuesday night in Tampa, Florida, dozens of supporters shouted down CNN reporter Jim Acosta as he tried to broadcast his report, shouting “CNN sucks” and other vulgarities.

President Trump also retweeted a video of the scene on his Twitter account.

Mrs. Sanders said the media also have a responsibility not to put people in danger, citing a news report from 1998 about Osama bin Laden’s use of a satellite phone, allegedly alerting the al Qaeda leader to government monitoring and causing him to abandon the device and avoid a missile attack.

Then-President George W. Bush asserted the news media published a U.S. government leak about bin Laden’s phone, an account published by The Washington Times.

The story was also reported in a best-selling book and reaffirmed by the Sept. 11 commission.

But later investigations found that the story appears to have not been true.