White House thinks it’s above the law

Dear Friend of Press Freedom:

A federal judge smacked down the White House’s media ban, but the administration seems to think complying with court orders is optional. Plus: Alongside our allies, we’re continuing the fight for real editorial independence – not some unconstitutional sham board – after a baffling capitulation from state attorneys general to David Ellison’s Paramount.

Judge rules media ban clearly unconstitutional

Yesterday, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly ruled that President Donald Trump could not bar CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House, rejecting the administration’s argument that “national security” concerns justified the ban. But despite Kelly’s temporary restraining order, all three outlets reported hours later that they were still being blocked from entering the premises. Compliance since has been spotty at best.

“Government officials who continue to deny journalists’ access to the White House in defiance of Kelly’s order should be held in contempt,” Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) Chief of Advocacy Seth Stern said. “And it’s long past time for judges to start aggressively sanctioning DOJ lawyers when they make frivolous national security arguments to turn Trump’s petty grievances against the press into government policy.”

Paramount settlement’s ‘editorial board’ is worthless

A coalition of state attorneys general proposed a settlement of their case opposing the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger, which would clear the way for both CNN and CBS News to be subsumed into the David Ellison-led Paramount Skydance. The agreement requires the creation of an “independent” editorial board to oversee both outlets and ensure independent, objective, fact-based reporting — an unconstitutional nightmare.

“The editorial board creates the same First Amendment problems it’s supposed to solve — the government meddling in the news,” FPF’s Stern explained in a statement. After the judge raised questions about the factual and legal underpinnings of the proposed settlement terms, FPF and its allies — represented by Brendan Benedict of Benedict Law Group and Jessica J. González of Free Press — filed a legal brief asking her to reject it.

Crickets from Ellison on the media ban

No one’s heard a peep from Ellison, who wrote a New York Times op-ed telling everyone they could trust him to run CNN independently, on the White House media ban. Surely he’ll stand up for the journalists he wants to employ, even if his buddy Trump doesn’t like them. After all, he found plenty of time to issue statements about the capitulation by the attorneys general. We and a coalition of over 100 leading journalists, rights organizations, academics, and advocates wrote him a letter just to make sure.

Hate Zuck? Pay attention to Larry

Meta’s newly introduced safeguards to protect kids from getting addicted to its products were praised by some parents and politicians, but they come with serious potential dangers of increased surveillance of the tech giant’s users. Whatever you think of Meta and Mark Zuckerberg, though, their abuses are nowhere near as concerning as what Larry Ellison, head of global spying machine and major military contractor Oracle and father and financier of Paramount CEO David, can do with his family’s stronghold over news, television, movies, and TikTok.

FPF’s Stern wrote for The Intercept about how Larry Ellison and his son are seeking unprecedented control over what the next generation watches and reads, and what they could accomplish in the artificial intelligence era.

Stop warrantless device searches at the border

Federal agents at the border are currently allowed, per Department of Homeland Security, to search travelers’ devices without a warrant. And for so-called basic searches, they can do so without any suspicion that the traveler has committed a crime. We filed an amicus brief in a case currently up for Supreme Court review, arguing that government access to journalists’ phones is a danger to both the press and its sources, and that this expansion of border-search authority could “chill newsgathering and undermine the confidentiality on which a free press depends.”

Overclassification is a bipartisan problem

The government overclassifies documents at an alarmingly high rate, and administrations of both parties have exacerbated and exploited the problem. FPF’s Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy Lauren Harper, writing for the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, detailed four ways to start fixing this pernicious issue, which deprives the public and their representatives of vital information about how the government is (or is not) functioning.