Thread by @jaketapper

Tonight at a @McCainInstitute event in NYC i'll be moderating a panel titled "We Hold These Truths: Protecting a Free Press Globally," with @carlaangola @Emilashi @jrezaian and @amberinzaman 1/

2/ As anchor of Buenos Noches in Venezuela, Carla Angola Rodriguez (@carlaangola) spoke against the Chavez and Maduro regimes. Threatened by Maduro's intelligence services SEBIN she and her family had to flee the country in 2014. From Miami she continues to cover the news.

3/ Elena Milashina (@Emilashi) covers human rights abuses for Novaya Gazeta, an independent newspaper in Russia, bringing to light the oppression of gay men in Chechnya, torture, persecution, disappearances, detentions, & extrajudicial executions - & has received death threats

4/ The former Tehran bureau chief for the @washingtonpost, Jason Rezaian (@jrezaian) covered Iran -- elections, nuclear negotiations, drug addiction -- until that country's regime unjustifiably jailed him for 545 days in its Evin prison.

5/ A roving correspondent for Al-Monitor, Amberin Zaman (@amberinzaman) covers the Kurds and other Middle East issues. She cannot return to Turkey because that country's government is investigating her under the bogus charge of "terrorist propaganda."

6/ As Sen. McCain once said, "If you want to preserve democracy as we know it, you have to have a free, and many times adversarial, press. And without it I'm afraid that we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time."

7/ While nothing compared to what these heroes have experienced overseas, we in the U.S. have seen an erosion of Free Press values, whether the government using the Espionage Act to go after whistleblowers, the SFPD raid on a journalist or the "enemy of the people" rhetoric.

8/ "...the only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure."

-- Jefferson to Lafayette