It's no more or less disturbing for journalists to be subjected to this. They're not some special class of protected people.

It's a lot more disturbing if other parts of the government can arbitrarily target people they don't like for harassment. There's a big difference between 10 random searches and 10 targeted searches. Journalists aren't that common. If there's a large cluster of journalists getting targeted in a close period of time, it's worth figuring out why that's happening.

Hmm...I thought they actually were a special class of protected people.

They'd like us to believe that. That's why they appropriated the term "the press" for themselves when it originally referred to a machine that was used to print. When 1A mentions "freedom... of the press", it's as one of a group of rights that apply to all people, not a group of different parties that have rights. That is, 1A protects everyone's freedom to operate a printing press, or use some other means of publishing and distribution that might have been invented since then.

I’d like to learn more about your interpretation of what “the press” is referring to; it strikes me as interesting that “operating a printing press” would be the explicitly enumerated right in such a (mostly) broad text, but then I am aware of the cultural differences over that many years means it’s not out of the realm of possibility. Do you have any articles or books I could read about this?

Back then, the "press" was the only method of communication other than actually talking to people. But the point was that the government couldn't infringe a method of communication.

EDIT: Note, for example, that the Federalist Papers that drove much of the discussion behind the policies in the Constitution were self-printed by Franklin, et al. Newspapers at that time were highly political and opinionated, like Fox News today, and did very little actual reporting of news. Journalists and "the press" didn't get conflated until much later.

The point is the government can't arbitrarily take away your medium of communication you legally own and use. Barring random specific issues (such as noise ordinances), if you own a megaphone (metaphorical or not) you can use it to spread your speech. If people could only exercise free speech by whispering quietly to themselves then it may as well not exist. You could start by reading wikipedia about freedom of the press.

That, I already understand. What I'm asking about is the narrower definition of "the press" in that historical context, because the usage nowadays is much broader.

You might argue journalists (amongst others) might be more subject to retaliatory harassment than ordinary people.

The freedom of the press is specifically called out for a reason.

The freedom of press in the 1st amendment refers to the printing press and the owners of those presses didn't want to be restricted on what they could print or be forced to print things they disagreed with.

It was not, in any way, intended to refer to "journalists", a group whose only defining characteristic appears to be employment by a certain group of private companies.

Try again.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jennifergranick/2014/03/20/obam...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/10/cpi-re...

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/06/obamas-whistleb...

https://www.businessinsider.com/james-risen-case-obama-journ...

https://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/obamas_personal_role_in_a_j...

You are making a strawman: they are not a special "class" indeed.

But they have a very special position and role that makes them specially vulnerable when dealing with powerful institutions.

On the one hand, it's extra bad because searching a journalist leads to an additional violation: freedom on the press.

On th other hand, we should not think of 1A rights as rights that only specialists or professionals need.

(Much like we shouldn't think of police as relieving civilians of their duty to help maintain law and order and safety. Police augment and assist citizens, as public servants.)

Except that we can all journalists really. There's no professional mandate. Go to rallies and make videos and post them on your political blog? You should be considered a journalist.

Every person with a laptop / cellphone and a thought can be a journalist. See the Opinion column on big news sites...

And a NASA scientist with top secret info on his device, too