donal brown

In a 5-4 decision the U.S Supreme Court ruled that Austin, Texas’ distinction between on-premise and off-premise signs (billboards) was content-neutral and thereby constitutional. (International Sign Association, April 21, 2022) The court found a lower court too extreme in ruling that Austin’s law was unconstitutional if a regulator has to read a sign to know if it is within the law. (Bloomberg Law, April 21, 2022, by Kimberly Strawbridge Robinson) For related FAC coverage, click

A Harvard Business School professor found that when local news outlets shut down, corporate corruption goes up. Violations at local public companies rose 1.1 percent and financial penalties by 15 percent. Toxic emissions escalated to almost 20 percent after a newspaper ceased publication. (NiemanLab, January 3, 2022, by Ann Marie Lipinski) Congress is considering measures to help news organizations. The measures provide tax credits for 50 percent of newsroom employees’ salary or up to $25,000

OpenMind Magazine took form in March to address science controversies and deceptions. Their stories address how people “misperceive or don’t perceive important science issues in the world,” says co-founder Corey S. Powell. “Our canvas is things that are misreported or misunderstood in popular culture, on science issues that matter. This is the magazine that sets things straight.”(Nieman Lab, April 13, 2022, by Shraddha Chakradhar) The magazine aims to help readers discern fake scientific news and

The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reaffirmed its earlier decision that scraping data from public profiles on the web was not a violation of a federal computer hacking law. The decision was good news for archivists, academics, researchers and journalists who scrape the web for information. Linkedin had brought the lawsuit to protect its user information. (techcrunch, April 18, 2022, by Zach Whittaker) The Computer Fraud And Abuse Act had empowered corporations to criminalize