Dear Friend of Press Freedom,
It’s the 80th day that Rümeysa Öztürk is facing deportation by the United States government for writing an op-ed it didn’t like. Meanwhile, aggression from law enforcement at protests in California have landed journalists in the hospital. Read on for more press freedom news.
Journalists under attack in LA
Our U.S. Press Freedom Tracker has been hard at work documenting the growing list of attacks on journalists — from shootings with crowd-control munitions to detainments to unlawful searches.
It’s a situation that is likely to get worse and spread to other cities, with local law enforcement emboldened by the administration’s rhetoric and federal agents being haphazardly thrown into situations they’re not trained to handle.
We worked with partner organizations in California to send letters to the Department of Homeland Security, Los Angeles law enforcement agencies, the Marines and National Guard informing them of their obligations under the First Amendment, and in the case of the local authorities, California law.
Of course, strongly worded letters are not nearly enough for situations like these, and there’s plenty more work to do. But in the meantime, we’re not going to stay silent. Read the letters here, here and here.
Superstar lawyers join our effort to stop Paramount settlement
As reported in the Los Angeles Times, we’ve got a legal all-star team behind our effort to stop Paramount Global from capitulating to President Donald Trump by settling his frivolous lawsuit over an edited “60 Minutes” interview with then Vice President Kamala Harris.
Abbe Lowell, a highly respected litigator who has handled countless high-profile cases, Norman Eisen, a former ambassador to the Czech Republic and White House ethics advisor and their respective teams sent a formal demand letter to Paramount’s directors on our behalf outlining our plans to file a shareholder derivative suit if Paramount tanks its reputation and furthers America’s democratic backslide by caving.
This is an expensive endeavor, and we don’t get a dime if we win — whatever we recover from rogue Paramount directors and officers goes back to Paramount. Read more here and support us if you can.
FPF takes State Department to court over Öztürk secrecy
Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) is taking the government to court over its refusal to disclose information about the arrest of Tufts graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk for exercising her constitutionally protected right to coauthor an op-ed the government didn’t like.
FPF, represented by Loevy and Loevy, filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the State Department in the District Court for the District of Columbia to force the release of two documents that will shed light on the government’s targeting of Öztürk. Read more here.
Documenting 10 years of Trump’s anti-press social media tirades
61,989. That’s how many social media posts by President Donald Trump over the past decade Tracker journalist Stephanie Sugars has single-handedly reviewed (at least as of yesterday).
Monday will mark 10 years since Trump famously descended a golden escalator at New York City’s Trump Tower in 2015 and launched his first winning bid for the Oval Office. The Tracker is marking the occasion by launching its Trump Anti-Press Social Media Tracker, a comprehensive database of Trump’s attacks on the press on Truth Social, X and elsewhere.
Read former Voice of America press freedom reporter Liam Scott’s article about Sugars and the database here.
What we’re reading
Supreme Court press corps asks chief justice to livestream court’s opinions (NPR). There’s simply no good reason for the Supreme Court to refuse to livestream its opinion announcements.
Woman arrested after interview by St. Paul journalist (Monitor). Federal authorities must promptly explain both their basis for arresting Isabel Lopez and how they knew where and when she’d be talking to reporters. Surveilling journalists is unacceptable.
Lindsey Graham thinks it should be illegal to identify ICE agents (Techdirt). It’s bad enough to ban identifying ICE agents, but notice how Graham slips in “other federal law enforcement officers involved in covert operations.” It’s part of a pro-secret police movement. And it’s bipartisan. Ask the taxpayers of LA.
Condemning SFPD’s detention of Daily Cal staffers and suppression of student journalism (The Daily Californian). Detaining journalists, even for a minute, prevents them from covering events of public concern, and violates their rights. The San Francisco Police Department and other police departments around the country need a crash course on the First Amendment.
DeSantis administration blasted for ‘chilling’ Florida press with cease and desist letter (Naples Daily News). Florida Gov. Ron Desantis is baselessly accusing the press of “coercing” people to say negative things about his wife’s initiatives. We assure you that no one is coercing us to say that Ron DeSantis is an anti-speech, wannabe authoritarian.
Small-town newspapers are dying because no one wants to run them (Columbia Journalism Review). Succession planning doesn’t usually make the list when people talk about the challenges facing the press, but Liam Scott explores the consequences of local newspaper publishers dying and retiring with no one there to take over.
