First Amendment News

While the Obama administration gets points for making an effect to involve the public in government, open government advocates and others say the effort needs a lot of tweaking especially in designing sites that are open to collaboration and creating web-based software programs so that government information is unified under one online offering. -DB NextGov May 27, 2009 By Aliya Sternstein President Obama was criticized during the presidential campaign for promoting himself as a community

An Australian journalist and university lecturer sees Twitter breaking down traditional structures in the the media, particularly in reporting breaking stories and connecting with the public for information and fresh perspectives on the news. -DB MediaShift May 27, 2009 By Julie Posetti Twitter became big news once journalists realized its power as a tool for breaking stories during the Mumbai Massacre in 2008. In the aftermath of the micro-blogging platform hitting the headlines, there was

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has ruled in favor of right of access in cases about pubic and press access to government records but in Freedom of Information Act cases has ruled in favor of withholding records. -DB Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press Press Release May 27, 2009 The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has released a report summarizing the First Amendment and freedom of information opinions of Supreme Court nominee

After Tehachapi, California citizens questioned the demotion of a middle school principal, the Kern County Grand Jury found that the school board limited public participation by failing to follow open government procedures. -DB KERO 23 ABC May 27, 2009 TEHACHAPI, Calif. — In response to several citizen complaints regarding the demotion of Jacobsen Middle School Principal Eric Trigueiro, the Health, Education and Social Services Committee 2008-2009 Kern County Grand Jury investigated the Tehachapi Unified School

With success using sites such Flickr, Facebook YouTube and others to share information with the public, the General Services Administration is planning to extend to other sites such as iTunes and LinkedIn. -DB NextGov May 22, 2009 By Gautham Nagesh Agencies have launched social networking applications at such a fast pace that government officials said on Friday that they plan to add more applications, such as Apple’s popular media store iTunes and the career-networking site