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David Snyder

How we are battling government secrecy

David Snyder May 21, 2020

A letter from Executive Director David Snyder In response to COVID-19, many government agencies have moved to close off public and press access to their inner workings.  The government’s urgent need to protect public health, however, should not and cannot come at the expense of the public’s right to know. And so FAC is working harder than ever. In the past few months we have: Led a coalition to push back hard against courts that

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Sunshine Week: Transparency Critical During Public Health Emergency

David Snyder March 16, 2020

A letter from Executive Director David Snyder Dear Friends of the First Amendment, During times of widespread uncertainty, the public needs a clear picture of what our government is doing.  Indeed, transparency is much more important in such times, when the government takes on a far greater role in our day-to-day lives. As government power waxes, so too does the possibility that power can be abused. So, I write to you today to remind you

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On Access: The First Amendment Crisis You Probably Haven’t Heard About

David Snyder January 13, 2020

The decline of proactive litigation by news organizations has had a profound negative effect on the public’s access to information. Anyone who follows the media knows that a seismic shift is underway in the way Americans produce and consume journalism. The financial decline of the legacy media has been exhaustively documented — its causes, effects and larger social import — and the rise of independent, startup and nonprofit media over the same period has been

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Four Open-Government Battles We Are Fighting and Why They Matter

David Snyder December 19, 2019

Even from the perspective of the happy warriors here at FAC, it hasn’t been the best year for First Amendment rights and government transparency. In some ways, 2019 plumbed new lows, with governments at all levels continuing their assault on press freedoms, free speech, and government transparency. But we’re not letting the curtains come down on this year without a fight. Several of them, in fact. I want to tell you about just four key

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Free Speech And A Free Press Were Under Attack in 2019. But You Made A Difference.

David Snyder November 18, 2019

A letter from the executive director 2019 was a year of grave threats to First Amendment rights. In San Francisco, police raided the home and office of a freelance journalist, Bryan Carmody, seizing his entire newsroom. In Washington, D.C., the Department of Justice blocked efforts to shed light on their seizure of phone and email records from a New York Times journalist, apparently in violation of DOJ’s own rules. And across California, police unions waged

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