Ballard Spahr: First Amendment Bars Trump from Blocking Critics on Twitter, Court Rules
Reprinted with Permission from Ballard Spahr A federal judge has ruled that the First Amendment prohibits President Donald J. Trump from blocking Twitter users because of political disagreements. Last summer, […]
The Newseum Institute’s First Amendment expert, Gene Policinski, originally published this commentary on May 11, 2018, on the Newseum blog, and has given First Amendment Watch permission to reprint. […]
President Trump Takes Fake News Accusations To New Level Tweeting Negative Coverage Equals Fake News
Presidents make use of all forms of communication to get their message out to voters. No other President has so effectively used Twitter as President Trump who has called it his "own form of media" used to counter "fake news." In his latest deluge, President Trump equates negative news coverage with "fake news" and threatens to revoke press credentials (again). The central role of the First Amendment is to protect the people in their writings about government affairs and government officials—and especially when it is negative, as that is when the government is most likely to try to punish writers. As James Madison wrote in his Virginia Report of 1800, freedom of the press protects the "right of freely examining public characters and measures, and of free communication among the people thereon, which has ever been justly deemed the only effectual guardian of every other right.”
Did White House Staff Sign Away Their First Amendment Rights?
The Washington Post reports that senior White House staffers in President Trump's administration were asked to sign long-term nondisclosure agreements which would prevent them from revealing confidential information. These agreements extended beyond the normal confidentiality obligations around classified information or attorney-client privilege and included fines if they were broken.
Gene Policinski Commentary: The White House is Wrong. A Free Press Is ‘The People’
The Newseum Institute’s First Amendment expert, Gene Policinski, originally published this commentary on March 8, 2018, in the Austin American-Statesman, and then Newseum blog, and has given First Amendment Watch permission to reprint. […]
Gene Policinski Commentary: Protect Journalists With The Same Laws That Protect All Of Us
The Newseum Institute’s First Amendment expert, Gene Policinski, originally published this commentary on the Newseum blog, and has given First Amendment Watch permission to reprint. I understand the motivation behind […]
State of the First Amendment Under President Trump Scores a C+
Every quarter the Newseum Institute produces a “report card” on how the current administration is faring on the five freedoms: religion, speech, press, assembly and petition. 15 First Amendment experts — academics, […]
Journalist Arrests Threaten Freedom of Press
Thomas Hughes and Jodie Ginsburg write that “Journalists are facing an unprecedented and unrelenting crackdown on their work that appears to come more from the playbook of dictatorial demagogues than […]