First Amendment News

The Obama administration said it would work with news photographers to allow greater opportunities to photograph the president in his public appearances. The agreement came after White House reporters yelled at Press Secretary Jay Carney on December 12 in protest of the increasing limits placed on the reporters. (Broadcasting & Cable, December 18, 2013, by John Eggerton) Mike Davis, a former White House picture editor in the second Bush administration, Time, December 12, 2013, wrote

Some commentators are claiming that the federal court ruling that the Obama administration’s National Security Agency surveillance program was unconstitutional strengthens the case that Edward Snowden who leaked documents revealing the extent of the surveillance is in fact a whistleblower who should be lauded instead of prosecuted. (American Civil Liberties Union, December 17, 2013, by Anthony D. Romero) The Washington D.C. district judge ruled that the surveillance infringed on the Fourth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable

A district federal judge ordered the Obama administration to release a foreign policy document that the administration had tried to withhold from the public even though it was unclassified and widely circulated within the executive branch. (McClatchy DC, December 18, 2013, by Michael Doyle) “The government appears to adopt the cavalier attitude that the President should be permitted to convey orders throughout the Executive Branch without public oversight– to engage in what is in effect

By Edward Wasserman  Alan Rusbridger, editor of London’s Guardian, faced off with British legislators last week about his newspaper’s publishing secrets about official surveillance that were leaked by the fugitive U.S. intelligence contractor, Edward Snowden. Press advocates weren’t pleased. Carl Bernstein, the Watergate-era star who’s on the Mount Rushmore of 20th century media heroes, certainly wasn’t. In an open letter to Rusbridger, Bernstein objected to Parliament’s “hauling in journalists for questioning and trying to intimidate

Disputes over the enforcement of the Brown Act, the state’s open government law, occupy a prominent place in local government deliberations this December. The Valey Center-Pauma Unified School District in San Diego County is contesting a challenge to their decision to tear down historic Civilian Conservation Corps buildings put up in the Great Depression. A group of citizens claims that the district violated the Brown Act by deciding to tear down the buildings prior to