First Amendment News

Two journalism organizations are joining to provide legal defense funds for journalists arrested or injured covering the news. The Press Freedom Defense Fund and the National Press Photographers Association are making the move when over 50 journalists have been arrested and some 200 assaulted during protests over the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. (NiemanLab, June 8, 2020, by Sarah Scire) The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press sent a letter to New

The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) filed a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s executive order cracking down on the social media. The order was in response to Twitter’s adding two fact-check labels to Trump’s tweets and restricting a post it felt supported violence. In the order Trump asked regulators to reduce legal protections for the social media from liability for content on their platforms. (The New York Times, June 2, 2020, by Kate Conger)

Joel Simon of the Committee to Protect Journalists writes in the Columbia Journalism Review, June 2, 2020, that hostility against journalists predated the Trump administration even if the intensity and scope of the current assaults is unprecedented. Police have been using military tactics and equipment to confront protesters, and journalists have been treated with no respect rather than as agents of the First Amendment. Simon suggests that reporters need to create new relationships with police

The U.S. Park Police who cleared Lafayette Square to allow President Donald Trump to walk from the White House to St. John’s Church for a photo op claimed that they only acted when they were pelted with projectiles. They also denied using tear gas, but a pepper agent has similar effects as tear gas. Journalists at the scene saw no evidence of projectiles. (Deadline, June 2, 2020, by Ted Johnson) St. John’s Church officials were

Pentagon officials were upset by President Donald Trump’s announcement that he is thinking of using the military to quell nationwide protests of the George Floyd killing by police in Minneapolis. Trump wants to use an 1807 law that allows the president to use the military to restore order in a civil disturbance. Other laws forbid the military from enforcing laws within the U.S. Even leaders of the national guard, now deployed in large numbers, warn