Press coalition to courts: Don’t walk back pandemic-era access
CTK/Josef Horazny via AP
Our court system should be open to the public and not operate behind closed doors.
The First Amendment gives the public and the press the right to attend trials, access court documents, and report on the justice system. But far too often, judges try to evade that right by sealing records or holding secret proceedings.
We must fight back against attempts to make the court system less transparent and push to expand access. Reporting on the courts helps make our justice system fairer and guards against miscarriages of justice.
Featured Items
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Crackdown in the statehouse: Lawmakers edge out press access
In a growing number of state legislatures across the country, journalists are facing new rules and proposed legislation that breaks with traditions of public access to legislators. These moves are a troubling development in the increasingly rocky relationship between government officials and the press that covers them, and should be rolled back and opposed wherever possible.
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Victory on the horizon in the “Free PACER” fight
The fight to free PACER, the federally managed database of public court records that has sat behind a paywall since its inception, has stretched on for more than a decade now. These efforts may finally pay off in 2022 with a bill poised for the Senate floor that achieves many of the aims of the "free PACER" movement.
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Statement on the extension of prior restraint order against New York Times Project Veritas reporting
Today's decision to allow this prior restraint of New York Times publishing to continue — and to restrict the paper's reporters from engaging in common newsgathering activities besides — is a shameful development. It is a cornerstone of speech law in this country that any prior restraint, even a very temporary one, is constitutionally permissible only in the most extreme scenarios. As the Times noted in its briefing on the issue, the result has been that such an order has not been entered against it since the Pentagon Papers case some 50 years ago.
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Prior restraint order in New York Times case on Project Veritas materials
A trial court judge has ordered The New York Times to stop disseminating information related to Project Veritas, in a shocking act of both prior restraint and restriction on protected newsgathering activities. Dean Baquet, executive editor of the New York Times, cited the Pentagon Papers case in calling the ruling "unconstitutional" and noting that it "sets a dangerous precedent." We agree.
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New lawsuit could finally bring FOIA transparency to the halls of Congress
Legislative Branch records don’t receive the kind of public scrutiny the Freedom of Information Act brings to the Executive, but that could change thanks to a novel lawsuit over video records related to the January 6 riot at the Capitol.
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Computer crime at the Supreme Court: Freedom of the Press Foundation and others weigh in on an upcoming CFAA case
The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act in a highly anticipated case, which has attracted over a dozen amicus briefs from experts around the country. Today we're highlighting some of the important speech arguments that directly affect journalists, presented in a selection of those briefs.
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Book publishing and prior restraint under Trump
“Prior restraint” — or the attempt by individuals or governments to use courts to censor books or newspapers before publication — has become a tool increasingly relied upon by President Trump and his inner circle.
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Supreme Court goes live in the age of COVID, and rules on press freedom issues
The Supreme Court will take the unprecedented step of broadcasting its oral arguments for two weeks beginning today, enacting in response to the coronavirus pandemic a measure that government transparency advocates have demanded for years.
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How’s newsgathering during COVID-19 at the state level? Depends on the governor.
Journalists covering state responses to the coronavirus pandemic are hampered as officials reduce seating in briefing rooms, introduce unreliable technology and, in some cases, refuse real-time questions.
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For student journalists, the beats are the same but the protections are different
Student journalists, plagued by questions of editorial independence and with varying degrees of First Amendment protections, nonetheless face the same press freedom challenges as their professional counterparts.The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, which documents First Amendment aggressions in the United States, has collected student journalism-based incidents at both the university …
