First Amendment News

Layoffs, pay cuts and shutdowns in the news media are accelerating across the U.S. in a disturbing new trend. The chain that includes The Orange County Register announced cutbacks; free lance foreign journalists are finding it difficult to sell their work; BuzzFeed laid off 100. (Columbia Journalism Review, February 1, 2018, by Mathew Ingram) The Charleston Gazette-Mail of West Virginia is filing for bankruptcy prior to a sell-off a year after one of their reporters

A media law professor found that it’s not just the public that is uninformed about the First Amendment, that when questioned media law lawyers and professors cited a number of misunderstandings common to journalists. One was the belief that the First Amendment only applies to government actions and not to private actors such as social media platforms; another that journalists enjoy greater constitutional protections for news gathering when in fact journalists, depending on the jurisdiction,

On free speech grounds, Kansas Governor Eric Greitens is defending his use of an app called Confide that erases text messages. Two St. Louis attorneys are suing the governor and his staff for violating the state’s open records law by using the app. Because the app is used behind closed doors, it is difficult to prove it is being used to conduct official business. (The Kansas City Star, January 31, by Jason Hancock) Confide is

A federal judge rejected on First Amendment grounds a Kansas law punishing citizens who boycott Israel. The law required all state contractors to certify they were not boycotting Israel. When a teacher was denied a job because of her boycotting Israel, she sued. The court cited a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court case over a boycott of white-owned stores in Mississippi stating that the law’s goal was “…to undermine the message of those participating in a

Republican House intelligence committee members are releasing a secret document provided by the FBI on the Russia investigation claiming that the FBI used a classified surveillance program to spy on a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser. The White House backed the release on the grounds that it provided transparency for the American people. (Politico, January 29, 2018, by Kyle Cheney) Some analysts say that without providing context and a “full application,” releasing the memo would