As journalists arrive at Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum to cover the 2024 Republican National Convention (RNC), we can expect the public to take to the streets to protest everything from Donald Trump’s nomination to the ongoing war in Gaza and the killing of Dvontaye Mitchell.
New ‘spy draft law’ and ongoing retaliation against those who expose government secrets show there’s a long way to go in combating overreach
The Supreme Court seems to understand the First Amendment limits on government coercion of speech — except when it comes to national security
Earlier this month, NYPD officers violently tackled journalist Reed Dunlea and arrested him while he attempted to cover a pro-Palestinian protest for his podcast. In a letter to the Brooklyn District Attorney calling for the charges to be dropped, FPF wrote that "arresting reporters is a crude form of censorship." Read more in our newsletter.
As unlikely as it sounds, Republicans and Democrats are putting their differences aside to support the most important press freedom legislation in modern times — the PRESS Act.
It’s troubling that our government apparently views disclosing its secrets as an exponentially more serious offense than possessing troves of child pornography
Our U.S. Press Freedom Tracker documented 11 prior restraints against journalists in 2023, the most since it started tracking them in 2017. The Supreme Court has called prior restraints — or government orders not to publish information — the “most serious” First Amendment violation. They are almost never constitutional. And yet, courts keep entering prior restraints with little regard for the law, leaving journalists censored while often slow-moving appellate processes play out.
Amendment would stop unconstitutional charges against journalists and whistleblowers without impacting real espionage cases
Don’t give presidents the tools to jail journalists.
While we did not see the scope of national social-justice protests of 2020—a year in which journalists were arrested or assaulted on average more than once a day—2021 still outpaced the years before it for press-freedom violations. We systematically capture this data in the US Press Freedom Tracker, where Freedom of the Press Foundation, in partnership with the Committee to Protect Journalists and other press freedom groups, has documented aggressions against journalists in the United States since 2017.