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
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Deferred prosecution agreements silence and extort journalists
Authorities chill press freedom when they condition dropping baseless charges on journalists agreeing to behave and paying fines
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Rights orgs, broadcasters demand info on FBI raid of journalist’s home
Lack of transparency on how Tim Burke’s newsgathering allegedly violated computer crime laws has a chilling effect on journalism
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Judges should have to go to law school. That's not as obvious as it sounds
But even experienced jurists often fail to protect journalists’ constitutional rights
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In defense of aggressive small-town newspapers
The decline of local news may be causing small-town officials to forget the role of the Fourth Estate
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Finders keepers? Police illegally seize and refuse to return journalists’ equipment
Police seizure of journalists’ equipment outside the newsroom should draw just as much outrage as the raid on the Marion County Record
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Use state law to shield newsrooms and reporters from police raids
Federal law limits searches and seizures of journalistic materials, but state law can give even greater protections.
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Press freedom after Marion
FPF spoke with the Lawfare podcast about the police raid on the Marion County Record and protections for journalists
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All eyes are rightfully on Marion, but these ten other press freedom violations also deserve attention
The raid in Kansas was uniquely egregious but it was far from the only newsworthy recent attack on the press
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Now is the time to stand with the Marion County Record. Here's how.
Three ways you can support the Marion County Record and press freedom
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FPF statement on withdrawal of Kansas search warrant
Authorities finally did the right thing, but the Record never should have been raided in the first place
