Dear Friend of Press Freedom,
For 157 days, Rümeysa Öztürk has faced deportation by the United States government for writing an op-ed it didn’t like, and for 76 days, Mario Guevara has been imprisoned for covering a protest. Read on for more, and click here to subscribe to our other newsletters.
Government excuses for Öztürk secrecy are insulting
A recent court filing suggests the U.S. government is abusing the Freedom of Information Act to hide potentially damning evidence about its March arrest of Öztürk over her co-authorship of an op-ed criticizing Israel.
The government told Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), in response to a lawsuit we’ve filed for Öztürk’s records, that releasing them would be an invasion of privacy, although it’s not clear whose. Read more here. And to learn more about our FOIA work, subscribe to our secrecy newsletter, The Classifieds.
Stop congressional secrecy bill
A new legislative proposal – almost identical to one we opposed in 2023 – would allow members and even former members of Congress to compel the censorship of a broad range of information that journalists and others are constitutionally entitled to publish.
It would impede journalists’ and watchdogs’ efforts to, for example, check property, vehicle or travel records to investigate bribery allegations, monitor lawmakers leaving their districts during emergencies, scrutinize potential financial conflicts impacting policy positions, and a myriad of other newsworthy matters. We collaborated with our friends at Defending Rights & Dissent on a petition to lawmakers to stop this censorial proposal. Contact your senator here.
Police: Don’t impersonate journalists
We told you last week that police in Eugene, Oregon, said they’d stop putting their videographers in “PRESS” vests. Great.
But the practice was disturbing enough that we thought police in Eugene and elsewhere needed to understand the dangers of government employees posing as journalists — from providing propagandists with greater access than real journalists to exposing journalists and police officers alike to the risk of assault.
We led a letter from press and liberties groups to Eugene’s police chief, copying national associations of police communications personnel.Read it here.
Another journalist restraining order
A couple years ago, a judge in Arizona issued a restraining order against journalist Camryn Sanchez at the behest of a state senator, Wendy Rogers. That ordeal was alarming, but press freedom advocates were able to breathe a sigh of relief when the order was struck down by another judge a few weeks later. That Rogers is, well, out of her mind, made it easier to hope that the whole thing was an isolated incident.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t appear to be the case. Maryland journalist Will Fries was recently served with a “peace order” that would’ve barred him from city hall in Salisbury. Fortunately, a judge ultimately declined to issue the order, but after the Arizona restraining order and plenty of other instances of local officials claiming bizarre grounds to punish routine newsgathering, it would be a mistake to dismiss Fries’ case as a one-off.
We talked to Fries about the experience via email. Read the conversation here.
What we’re reading
Israel’s killing of six Gaza journalists draws global condemnation (Al Jazeera). We told Al Jazeera that “Any story that quotes an Israeli official or references Israeli allegations should say that Israel does not allow the international press to verify its claims and kills the local journalists who try.”
Homeland Security tells watchdog it hasn’t kept text message data since April (The New York Times). We told the Times that “Agencies cannot get away from responding to FOIA requests by intentionally degrading their capabilities … This is like a fire department saying, ‘We don’t have a hose, so we’re not going to put out the fires anymore.’”
Accepted at universities, unable to get visas: inside Trump’s war on international students (The Intercept). “An intrepid reporter who wants to use his time in America to become an even more effective watchdog against government corruption is an undesirable in the eyes of a corrupt government like ours,” we told The Intercept about journalist Kaushik Raj’s student visa denial.
News groups ask judge to increase protections for journalists covering LA protests (Courthouse News). The federal government apparently believes that assaulting journalists covering protests is legal because “videotaping can lead to violence.” The First Amendment says otherwise.
The student newspaper suing Marco Rubio over targeted deportations (The Intercept). “It does not matter if you’re a citizen, here on a green card, or visiting Las Vegas for the weekend — you shouldn’t have to fear retaliation because the government doesn’t like what you have to say,” Conor Fitzpatrick of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression told The Intercept.
Lack of local news tied to government secrecy, new report says (Medill Local News Initiative). A new study by the Brechner Center for the Advancement of the First Amendment shows that states with more newspapers are more likely to respond to records requests, and states with fewer papers are more likely to ignore them.
Public broadcast cuts hit rural areas, revealing a political shift (The New York Times). Rural stations in Alaska and elsewhere may no longer have the bandwidth to send emergency alerts. That could be the difference between life and death.
Opinion: D.C. must invest in local news (The 51st). Funding local news by directing public grants through consumer coupons is a creative way to address the local news crisis. Local governments must act to keep community news from dying.
