donal brown

An Indiana reporter was ordered to testify and surrender interview notes about a story she wrote in March on a murder investigation. Her employer, The Elkhart Truth, is fighting the order. Indiana has a strong shield law for journalists stipulating that they should not be forced to testify about their sources.  (The Elkhart Truth, April 14, 2015, by Michelle Sokol) NewsGuild president Bernie Lunzer said it was improper for the prosecuting attorney to subpoena Emily

The Reuters Iraq bureau chief Jon Parker fled the country after death threats by a Shi’ite paramilitary group who objected to Reuters reports of lynchings and looting in Tikrit. Parker and two colleagues had written about human rights abuses  and widespread looting and arson in the city attributed by local politicians to Iran-backed Shi’ite militias. (Reuters, April 11, 2015) The three Reuters reporters had witnessed the hacking death of  a suspected ISIS fighter by a

Even though a federal appeals court ruled in April of 2014 that the Justice Department must release memos with the legal justification for killing U.S. citizens overseas by drone strikes because the DOJ had already publicly commented on the contents of the memos, the DOJ is still insisting that it still has the right to keep the them secret even though the documents have already been disclosed through the court order. “When government agencies fight

In two recent cases, college administrations cautioned their communities that free speech rights should prevail even when the speech is hateful, offensive or otherwise unsettling. But students at Brown University were recently offered an alternative event to a talk from a speaker skeptical of  arguments there is a prevailing “campus rape culture.” In response a student wrote in a column in the student newspaper, “As students, we don’t have a right to be comfortable. …