Ninth Circuit Lifts Injunction Exempting Journalists and Legal Observers from Dispersal Orders
In a 2-1 decision, the Ninth Circuit wrote that the lower court’s restraining order was too broad because it failed to specify who qualified as a journalist or legal observer. In previous hearings, the federal government had argued that differentiating between journalists and protesters was especially difficult given that some protesters wear press insignia to avoid the police’s crowd control tactics.
2020 World Press Freedom Index Warns of the Impact of Coronavirus on Free Expression
“The public health crisis provides authoritarian governments with an opportunity to implement the notorious ‘shock doctrine’ – to take advantage of the fact that politics are on hold, the public is stunned and protests are out of the question, in order to impose measures that would be impossible in normal times,” Reporters Without Borders Secretary-General Christophe Deloire said in a statement.
Why Protest Sites and the Border Remain Risky Places to Report
Reporters Committee Attorney and author of the 2019 Press Freedom Report Sarah Matthews explains why borders and protests remain risky for journalists, as well as how data collected in the US Press Freedom Tracker drives her advocacy work.
New Study Says Trump Has Undermined Press Freedoms On a Global Scale
The report cites data collected by Freedom House, which shows that, at a minimum, 26 countries have enacted or introduced laws and government rules restricting online media and journalistic access in the name of controlling “fake news.”
Pompeo Punishes NPR Reporter After Heated Exchange with Colleague
NPR's Michele Kelemen will no longer be allowed to travel with the Secretary of State on his upcoming trip to Europe and Central Asia. The decision appears to be a act of retaliation against the news organization following a tense exchange between Pompeo and Keleman's colleague this past Saturday.
Media Law Expert George Freeman Talks About the Internet, Political Polarization, and Defamation Law
The libel of laws haven't changed and Trump is not going to change them, but he has created an environment where attacking the press has become commonplace, not only by him, but by many of his followers and supporters.
Two Free Press Groups Try To Block Attempt to Reveal Confidential Source
Two free expression groups, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP) and the Media Legal Defence Initiative, filed a friend-of-the-court brief on December 9th asking a federal court […]
Devin Nunes Files $435 Million Defamation Lawsuit Against CNN
The California representative has filed three separate defamation lawsuits this year. In his third, Nunes claims that CNN published a “demonstrably false hit piece” about an alleged trip the congressman took to Austria to meet with an ex-Ukranian official.