Coalition News

First Amendment Coalition Executive Director David Snyder was named the recipient of the 2019 Freedom of Information Award given by the Society of Professional Journalists’ Los Angeles Pro Chapter. The annual award honors a non-journalist who has helped promote First Amendment rights and values.  Snyder, a former newspaper reporter and media lawyer who has led FAC since 2016, is being recognized for fighting “legal battles across the state, winning key rulings resulting in the release

The First Amendment Coalition is pleased to announce the California Reporting Project is the recipient of the 2019 Free Speech & Open Government Award, given in recognition of the project’s groundbreaking statewide campaign to bring to light records of police misconduct.  The project, an unprecedented collaboration of competing newsrooms, started as a cooperative effort between the Bay Area News Group/Southern California News Group, Capital Public Radio, Investigative Studios (of UC Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program), KPCC/LAist,

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