Dear Friend of Press Freedom,
It’s the 143rd day that Rümeysa Öztürk is facing deportation by the United States government for writing an op-ed it didn’t like, and the 62nd day that Mario Guevara has been imprisoned for covering a protest. After more than two months in detention, press freedom groups are again demanding Guevara’s immediate release. Read on for more, and click here to subscribe to our other newsletters.
LAPD lies about attack on reporters
Last Friday, officers from the Los Angeles Police Department wantonly violated a court order by assaulting, detaining, and jailing journalists covering a protest.
Then, the LAPD falsely told California station KABC-TV that two people were detained at the protest for “pretending to be media.” The two were, in fact, journalists, but you wouldn’t know it from KABC-TV’s report, which uncritically parroted the LAPD’s claims.
Journalists must be skeptical of LAPD statements about its treatment of the press. The department knows that it violates the First Amendment and California law to detain or interfere with journalists covering protests, but it does it anyway. It won’t stop until the press reports accurately on all of the LAPD’s abuses, and the public makes clear that it won’t stand for them.
Israel kills journalists in Gaza to silence reporting
Two weeks ago, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported on the Israeli Defense Forces’ threats to Anas al-Sharif, meant to scare him into ceasing reporting. He didn’t, and now he’s dead.
Al-Sharif was one of four Al Jazeera staff correspondents and two freelancers killed by the IDF in an Aug. 10 targeted strike. The others were Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal, Moamen Aliwa, and Mohammad al-Khaldi.
“Israel is killing journalists for exposing its atrocities in Gaza,” said Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) director of advocacy Seth Stern. “We can’t let our leaders get away with mere performative condemnations while the money and weapons Israel uses to exterminate journalists and other civilians keep flowing.”
Two years since ‘a massive failure’ of the justice system in Kansas
This week marked two years since the shocking police raid on the Marion County Record and the death of Record co-owner Joan Meyer, who passed away the day after the raid.
FPF spoke to investigative journalist Jessica McMaster, whose award-winning coverage of the raid for KSHB-TV in Kansas City, Missouri, had us glued to her social media feed for weeks.
“This was a massive failure by several people within the justice system,” McMaster said, speaking about the raid. “I think it’s hard for a lot of us to grasp that so many people, in positions of power, failed in such spectacular fashion to do their jobs.”
How a climate change researcher makes FOIA work
Rachel Santarsiero, director of the Climate Change Transparency Project at the National Security Archive, knows how to use the Freedom of Information Act to uncover information the government would rather keep secret. This week, FPF’s Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy Lauren Harper spoke to Santarsiero, who shared her expert FOIA tips.
“The key with any agency is sending targeted requests asking for specific types of documents, a date range, and the office or official who would’ve been responsible for the records,” Santarsiero explained.
Santarsiero also recommends that requesters build relationships with FOIA officers, always appeal denials, and check federal website reading rooms and other publicly available source materials. “You’ll be surprised what you can find hiding in plain sight,” she said.
Read the whole interview here.
What we’re reading
Eyewitness to Gaza’s death traps: Whistleblower Anthony Aguilar in conversation with Defending Rights & Dissent (Defending Rights & Dissent). With journalists being killed or shut out in Gaza, whistleblowers are even more important. Watch Anthony Aguilar’s firsthand account of blowing the whistle on the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
Trump administration outlines plan to throw out an agency’s FOIA requests en masse (404Media). This is “an underhanded attempt to close out as many FOIA requests as possible, because who in their right mind checks the federal register regularly?” FPF’s Harper said.
Appeals court upholds block on Indiana’s 25-foot police buffer law, citing vagueness (Indiana Capital Chronicle). Hopefully, Tennessee’s and Louisiana’s “buffer” laws will be next, and other states will think twice before passing these unconstitutional laws.
Sorry, scanner listeners: BPD is encrypting its transmissions starting this weekend (Boston.com). Just like in New York City, encrypting police radio transmissions and adding a delay makes it harder for journalists to report and the public to stay informed.
