New guide helps journalists know their rights when police come knocking
Marion County Record
Searches of newsrooms and seizures of journalists’ materials chill reporting.
Police searches of newsrooms and seizures of journalists' communications, electronic devices, notes, and other reporting materials intimidates journalists and sources and chill reporting. Searches and seizures can reveal confidential sources and transform reporters into tools of law enforcement.
Numerous laws protect reporters from searches and seizures, but police routinely violate them. Too often, courts rubber-stamp requests for searches and seizures involving journalists. In some instances, officials even appear to have obtained illegal search warrants to intimidate and silence journalists and news outlets who criticize them.
Featured Items
-
Not in Kansas anymore: Alabama press violations echo earlier attack
Officials who orchestrate retaliatory schemes against local news outlets like the Atmore News must be held accountable
-
Ending endless police seizures of journalists’ equipment
Attorney Christie Hebert of the Institute for Justice explains what to do if police take your device and hold it hostage
-
Texas authorities extort journalist with his own equipment
Court states the obvious: Citizen journalists have the same First Amendment rights as any other journalists
-
A year after Marion County Record raid, authorities keep ignoring press rights
Kansas raid was unusually dramatic, but smaller scale violations are a serious and persistent problem
-
FPF statement on special prosecutors’ report on Marion County Record raid
Accountability for the illegal raid is welcome — better late than never. But more is needed.
-
Journalists’ source material isn’t ‘stolen goods’
Investigation of LA journalist is the latest example of authorities blaming journalists for their sources’ alleged crimes
-
‘From Bylines to Behind Bars’: Journalists arrested covering protests
We spoke with two experts about the alarming spike in arrests and detentions of journalists covering protests over the Israel-Gaza war
-
Israel’s seizure of AP equipment shows slippery slope of censorship
Recent legislation here is just as prone to abuse as the law Israel used to punish Al Jazeera and then the Associated Press
-
Settlement hasn’t stopped NYPD’s press abuses at protests
‘Catch and release’ arrests, kettling are among the problematic practices employed by officers responding to Israel-Gaza war protests
-
Press freedom under attack at campus protests
We’ve documented dozens of press freedom violations against journalists covering pro-Palestinian protests and counterprotests — and the number is growing
