Dear Friend of Press Freedom,
Happy Valentine’s Day. Here are the topics we’re keeping in our hearts this week.
First Amendment law legend: ‘Fight back’
James Goodale, former vice chairman and general counsel of The New York Times, has seen it all when it comes to press freedom. He was involved in all four cases that the Times took to the Supreme Court and led its resistance to the Nixon administration’s war on the press, most notably in the historic Pentagon Papers case.
We sat down with Goodale to discuss the Trump administration’s multipronged attacks on journalism, particularly by extracting settlement payments from media outlets. Read more here.
Hypocrisy as deep as the Gulf of Mexico
The same Trump administration that issued an executive order on its first day to restore free speech spent the week barring The Associated Press from executive order signings because it writes “Gulf of Mexico” despite Trump’s “Gulf of America” stunt.
We told The Washington Post that “punishing journalists for not using words the government likes is an egregious violation of the First Amendment. Trump’s team knows that, notwithstanding their ridiculous justifications, and clearly doesn’t care.”
That being said, we also told the Post, we hope “news outlets Trump punishes by restricting their access to briefings, signings and the like will take the opportunity to double down on hard-hitting investigations that don’t require access to ceremonies and spin sessions.”
National Archives under threat
We helped lead a bipartisan coalition protesting both the unwarranted firing of the archivist of the United States, Colleen Shogan, and the possibility she may be replaced by someone unqualified to lead the National Archives and Records Administration.
NARA plays a key role in making sure agencies preserve records. The public needs to know now more than ever that it has qualified leadership. Otherwise, the government will have an easier time keeping secrets. Read more here.
UK spy order imperils First Amendment
New revelations by the Post about a secret spying order in the U.K. should alarm journalists everywhere. The Post reported that the U.K. government obtained a secret order requiring Apple to create a “backdoor” that allows security officials to retrieve all content uploaded to the cloud by any Apple user worldwide.
The order “requires blanket capability to view fully encrypted material.” As others have pointed out, once the U.K. claims this authority, it will be a hop, skip, and a jump to other countries doing the same. It’s not hard to imagine what Russia, China, or the Trump administration would do with this vast spying power. Read more here.
Privacy policy update
We’ve updated FPF’s privacy policy to include a new data processing provider and to refresh our website hosting information. See the updated policy for details.
What we’re reading
How Elon Musk and the right are trying to recast reporting as ‘doxxing’ (The New York Times). “If living in the U.S. in 2025 means you can expect a criminal investigation for criticizing the government, we’re all in a whole lot of trouble,” said Will Creeley of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
When ICE raids go awry, reporting gets blamed (Columbia Journalism Review). Reporting on what Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers do in public isn’t “leaking.” The government loves to claim there’s no privacy in public when it wants to surveil you, but not when it wants to spend your money on ICE raids.
Casino mogul Wynn asks US Supreme Court to revisit Times v. Sullivan defamation rule (Reuters). We can’t imagine how lowering the bar for defamation claims could ever come back to bite conservative media. You’d think an ex-casino boss would be a smarter gambler.
FCC investigating San Francisco radio station over coverage of ICE raids (CNN). We told CNN that government regulators “don’t get to decide what news the public is interested in hearing about.”
2024 is deadliest year for journalists in CPJ history; almost 70% killed by Israel (Committee to Protect Journalists). “At least 124 journalists and media workers were killed last year, nearly two-thirds of them Palestinians killed by Israel.”
Judge: Presidents may be immune from prosecution but not transparency (The Dissenter). A federal judge ruled that the FBI’s reasons for hiding information about its classified documents case against Trump no longer apply.
A plea for institutional modesty (Columbia Journalism Review). “You are not the first chairman to use the Federal Communications Commission as a pulpit ... But there is one thing you should keep in mind: you don’t have as much power as you may think,” Robert Corn-Revere of FIRE, and former FCC chief counsel tells FCC Chair Brendan Carr.
Trump accused of leading a ‘multipronged’ attack on US media (Al Jazeera). CBS claiming it was legally compelled to turn over outtakes of its Kamala Harris interview “is a head-scratcher,” we told Al Jazeera. “There is a legal system where you can resist unconstitutional demands from the government.”
Bill would give Wyoming strongest laws in country to fight frivolous defamation lawsuits (Cowboy State Daily). Even the reddest states’ legislatures understand there’s nothing partisan about protections against anti-speech lawfare.
Here’s how to share sensitive leaks with the press.
