Statement from Kenya Young, President CEO of LPM:February 4, 2026Louisville Public Media (LPM) stands firmly against the growing suppression of press freedom in America. LPM joins the Committee to Protect Journalists, the National Association of Black Journalists, the National Association of Hispan ic Journalists, the Online News Association and dozens of organizations that have spoken out against the recent arrests of journalists doing their job and the broader assault on press freedom.As president and CEO of Louisville Public Media, I want to be direct about what we are witnessing in this country.In the last week, public conversation has centered largely on the arrests of Don Lemon and Georgia Fort following their coverage of an anti-ICE protest at a Minneapolis church. LPM condemns these arrests and any action that criminalizes the act of journalism. But the spectacle surrounding high-profile arrests risks becoming a distraction from what should alarm every American.LPM stands with every journalist facing intimidation. And while the country debates one disturbing but polarizing public case, make no mistake - the pattern is escalating.Just three weeks ago, federal agents searched the home of a Washington Post reporter and seized her devices - not through a subpoena, not through negotiation with her newsroom, but by showing up at her door. Over the past several months federal immigration agents have pepper-sprayed, tear-gassed and physically confronted journalists covering their enforcement and tactics across the country - journalists with cameras and credentials who have identified themselves as press and still were treated as threats.What should concern us all is what happens when this becomes the norm in America.When press suppression is normalized at the highest levels of government, it does not stay there. It spreads into every corner of our society. Across the country, student journalists, whom we entrust as the next generation of our free press, are being defunded, censored, and retaliated against on their own campuses, by their own universities. Fired for asking tough questions. Stripped of editorial independence. Blocked from distributing their own newspapers. The message from the top is traveling downward: journalism is not welcome here.We know what happens when press suppression becomes systemic. We have seen it in countries where governments silence the journalists who ask inconvenient questions, where newsrooms are raided and reporters are detained, where the act of documenting what those in power do becomes a crime. These are not the tenets of a free society. They are the tactics of governments that fear accountability, not ones that embrace it. Press freedom should never be a partisan issue — it is the principle that makes democratic governance possible.Press freedom is not a privilege granted by the powerful. It is a right that belongs to the people. I did not enter this profession to watch it be dismantled. And I will not lead this organization in silence while it happens.Our newsroom - which includes the work of 89.3 WFPL News Louisville, the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting, the Kentucky Public Radio Network and the Appalachia + Mid-South Newsroom - exists because of the freedoms a free press affords. Louisville Public Media stands united in defense of those freedoms.With fervor and determination,Kenya YoungPresident and CEOLouisville Public Media ...read more read less