First Amendment News

Representatives Adam Schiff and Mark Takano asked Twitter’s Elon Musk to investigate the increase in hate speech on his social media platform. Antisemitic speech has increased by 106 percent since Musk took over Twitter. (Jurist, March 28, 2023, by Madeline Bruce) In the meantime, Fire reported on journalist Michael Shellenberger’s testimony before Congress, urging it to step up for the First Amendment in requiring transparency on government attempts to affect social media decisions on content.

In the wake of the shout down of a guest speaker from a federal appeals court, Stanford Law School Dean Jenny Martinez and University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne apologized and pledged to honor Stanford’s policies against hecklers suppressing speech. Martinez said it was ill-advised to set precedents for suppressing speech as that power could be redirected to suppress the views of “marginalized groups.” (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, March 22, 2023, by Talia Barnes and

The American Civil Liberties Union considers a ban on TikTok a violation of the First Amendment, which protects speech from government regulation. An ACLU lawyer said, “The government can’t impose this type of total ban [on TikTok] unless it’s necessary to prevent extremely serious, immediate harm to national security. There’s no public evidence of that type of harm, and a ban would not be the only option for addressing that harm if it did exist.”

A recent study shows that corrections in news reports improves audience comprehension but reduces trust in a journalist’s reporting. Allowing others to make corrections was not as effective in informing the audience. (Nieman Lab, March 27, 2023, by Dan Gillmor)

Former Trump Attorney General, William Barr argues (The Wall Street Journal, March 23, 2023) that Dominion’s defamation case against Fox News has fatal flaws. Barr echoes Fox’s contention that they were just covering the false statements of election deniers rather than endorsing them and that Fox hosts were expressing opinions in telling lies about the election and Trump’s defeat. Aaron Blake, The Washington Post, March 24, 2023, finds Barr’s arguments lacking. Barr said Fox was