Dear Friend of Press Freedom,
Here are some of the most important stories we’re following from the U.S. and around the world. If you enjoy reading this newsletter, please forward it to friends and family. If someone has forwarded you this newsletter, please subscribe here.
Federal anti-SLAPP law needed ASAP
Recent baseless lawsuits against liberal and conservative outlets show the need for a federal law counteracting strategic lawsuits against public participation, or SLAPPs, Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) Deputy Director of Advocacy Caitlin Vogus wrote for The Hill.
As Vogus wrote, "Many states — both red and blue — have made clear that they want to protect their citizens’ freedom of speech from meritless litigation. It’s time for Congress to act to ensure that federal courts don’t thwart those protections. It’s time to pass a federal anti-SLAPP law."
You can read Vogus’s op-ed here. Her point is driven home by news last week that Media Matters was forced to lay off 12 employees largely due to frivolous lawsuits driven by Elon Musk. Our statement in response to that development called it “the latest example of billionaires and pandering politicians abusing the legal system to retaliate against their critics and harm the public’s right to know.”
11 years after Snowden revelations, surveillance continues expanding
This week marked 11 years since Edward Snowden — a longtime board member of FPF — blew the whistle on mass surveillance by the National Security Agency.
But this year, the uphill battles against surveillance and to protect whistleblowers like Snowden encountered some serious setbacks, like the alarming expansion of Section 702 of FISA. As Snowden himself put it, "In my opinion no country that has something like this to enter into force can still be considered to be free."
We wrote on our website about why we must “remember the sense of alarm we felt when Snowden showed us the scope of the government’s illegal surveillance of Americans and we should continue fighting back, even more aggressively than in 2013.”
Authorities must drop case against Oregon journalist
A coalition of press freedom groups led by FPF sent a letter to Oregon’s Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt, demanding that he drop a criminal trespass charge against Portland photojournalist Alissa Azar.
Azar was covering a pro-Palestinian protest at Portland State University on May 2, 2024, when officers shoved her to the ground and arrested her, despite her press credentials from the National Press Photographers Association. The case is particularly alarming in Portland, given that a federal appellate court specifically upheld the rights of journalists there to cover protests even after crowd dispersals.
Read the full letter and our statement on our website.
What we’re reading
On today’s arrests at the president’s office (The Stanford Daily). A Stanford Daily student reporter was arrested while covering a pro-Palestinian protest. California law and the First Amendment require authorities to drop the case immediately.
Reinvigorating diplomacy: Global tensions and press freedom (Project Censored). FPF Advocacy Director Seth Stern joined the Project Censored radio show to discuss the need to pass the PRESS Act, the federal bill to protect journalist-source confidentiality.
Foot-dragging in Marion raid investigation should fill public with dread (Kansas Reflector). "It took the Warren Commission 300 days to investigate the assassination of John Kennedy. It now appears it will take at least 314 days to investigate what happened in our newsroom," said Eric Meyer of the Marion County Record. The delay is unacceptable.
These strange bedfellows want SCOTUS to remind the 5th Circuit that journalism is not a crime (Reason). The cops and prosecutors who went after journalist Priscilla Villarreal for soliciting information from public officials shouldn’t be able to hide behind qualified immunity. Groups on the right and the left agree: This is a matter of basic press freedom.
