Press freedom wins in Chicago court, but fight continues
Chicago journalists won a big First Amendment victory Oct. 9, when a federal court temporarily curbed federal officers’ abuses at protests. But the fight isn’t over.
The order still allows officers to potentially remove journalists along with protesters, a serious threat to press freedom that must be fixed.
We also can’t rely on courts alone. Local officials must step up, especially to protect independent journalists, who’ve been the main targets of these violations.
That’s why Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) led a coalition letter urging the Broadview, Illinois, Police Department and Illinois State Police to investigate attacks on independent journalists covering protests.
Read more about the order here.
Strengthen presidential library transparency
A segment on “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” about corruption and secrecy surrounding presidential libraries cited FPF’s Lauren Harper, who has been warning about Trump’s purported library since before his inauguration.
Oliver is right. Secret donations to presidential libraries enable bribery, while public access to presidential records is at an all-time low. Use our action center tool to tell Congress to close the secrecy loopholes and increase transparency.
Army lawyer thinks journalists are stenographers
The Pentagon attempted to walk back its policy restricting reporters from publishing news the government doesn’t authorize. But the revised policy is still a nonstarter to which no journalist should agree.
Meanwhile, a nominee for general counsel for the Department of the Army, Charles L. Young III, effectively endorsed the unconstitutional restrictions during a Senate hearing this week, opining that the First Amendment authorizes the government to punish journalists for publishing information that it did not approve for public release.
That’s disqualifying. A journalist’s job isn’t to keep the government’s secrets. It’s to report news the government does not want reported.
Tell Congress to reject Young’s nomination.
State Department must stand up for journalists detained on flotillas
Israel continues to hold American journalists captured in international waters aboard aid flotillas. The latest are Jewish Currents reporter Emily Wilder and Drop Site News reporter Noa Avishag Schnall. Previously, Israel detained Drop Site News reporter Alex Colston, who has said he and other detainees were abused and denied medical care.
But the State Department is doing little if anything about these detainments, presumably because the journalists in question don’t agree with the administration’s policies. Lawmakers need to raise their voices and pressure the administration to do more.
Write to your member of Congress here.
Student journalists fight Trump’s anti-speech deportations
It’s not every day a student newspaper takes on the federal government. But that’s exactly what The Stanford Daily is doing.
The Daily sued Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem in August over the Trump administration’s push to deport foreign students for exercising free speech, like writing op-eds and attending protests.
We spoke at the start of Stanford University’s fall term with Editor-in-Chief Greta Reich about why the Daily is fighting back. Read more here.
It’s time to end the SEC gag rule
We’ve written before about the unconstitutionality of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s “gag rule,” which bars those who settle with the SEC from talking to reporters, to protect the SEC’s reputation.
We shouldn’t need to say this, but the government doesn’t get to censor its critics to make itself look good. Last week, we filed a legal brief explaining to a federal appellate court why the ridiculous rule must be struck down. Read the brief here.
What we’re reading
ICE goes masked for a single reason (The New York Times). FPF’s Adam Rose tells the Times that immigration officers “seem to feel they can just willy-nilly shoot tear gas canisters at people and shoot them with foam rounds that can permanently maim people.”
The New York Times wins right to obtain info Musk wanted kept private (The New Republic). A court ruled that the public’s interest in knowing if Elon Musk has a security clearance and access to classified information outweighs any potential privacy interests.
Press Freedom Partnership newsletter (The Washington Post). “Journalists who are considering covering the story are going to think twice about it and stay home because they don’t want to be jailed and shot. It’s a major problem,” we told the Post about law enforcement targeting journalists covering anti-deportation protests in and around Chicago.
Journalism has become more challenging, for reporters and sources (Sentient). Sources have backed out of news stories — even seemingly uncontroversial ones — out of fear of being targeted by the Trump administration.
MAGA slams ‘fake news’ but embraces ‘The Benny Show’s’ misinformation (Straight Arrow News). “Plenty of past presidents would have loved to exclude serious journalists … and bring in the Benny Johnsons of their time. They just were under the impression that the public wouldn’t tolerate that,” we told Straight Arrow News. Now it’s up to the public to prove those past presidents right and the current one wrong.
