donal brown

The Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has ruled that a Maryland campaign finance law requiring newspapers and online platforms to disclose the identity of political ad buyers and the cost of the ads ran afoul of the First Amendment. While sympathetic to the state’s attempt to bring transparency to the world of tech and elections, the court felt it had overstepped. (The Baltimore Sun, December 9, 2019, by Jeff Barker) Newspapers argued that the

Attorney General William Barr suggested that communities not respecting authority by protesting police actions could lose the protection of law enforcement. Barr has long criticized district attorneys in cities like Philadelphia in St. Louis for holding police to account. He has also said there should be “zero tolerance for resisting police.” (The Washington Post, December 4, 2019, by Tim Elfrink) Barr failed to note that many of the protests were sparked by police shootings of

The news media and social media industries are rising to the challenge of the tsunami of lies and distortions. “…newsrooms like BuzzFeed have successfully turned investigating misinformation on social platforms into a potent media beat. New techniques and technologies employed by enterprising investigative journalists everywhere from the New York Times to Bellingcat, an independent site, have challenged conflicting reports on subjects as diverse as the shooting down of Malaysian airliner MH17 and the killing of

FIRE’s study of college speech codes for 2018 revealed an estimated 6.4 million students do not enjoy full free speech rights on campus. They found that 89 percent of colleges retain policies that restriction student expression. FIRE’s Laura Beltz said, “Many college administrators are scrubbing the most egregious policies from the books, but they’re increasingly crafting subtler policies that still limit student expression.” (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, December 4, 2019, press release) While