First Amendment News

The National Football League (NFL) refused to run an ad by a Georgia gun manufacturer during the Super Bowl next February. The ad did not meet league standards prohibiting ads mentioning firearms. The ad does not specifically mention guns but includes a silhouette of one. (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, December 6, 2013, by Christopher Seward) The manufacturer, Daniel Defense, said about the purpose of the ad, “We are trying to exercise our First Amendment rights to

A Fox News reporter won a ruling in a New York Court of Appeals quashing a subpoena served on her in pursuit of her source for a story on James Holmes, the suspect in the Aurora, Colorado theater shooting. Holmes’ defense team had issued the the subpoena which had to be served in New York where the reporter lives. The court cited New York law as one of the strongest in the nation and world

Four prominent tech companies ran a full-page ad in four media outlets petitioning Congress to restrict the federal government’s mass surveillance of U.S. citizens. The companies’ request included limits to government authority, greater oversight and accountability and increased transparency. (Electronic Frontier Foundation, December 9, 2013, by Kurt Opsahl and Rainjey Reitman) The companies, Apple, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, AOL, LinkedIn, Google and Microsoft, have a vested interest in protecting their users’ privacy but have put their

The Obama administration announced the second Open Government National Action Plan that includes an initiative to make the Freedom Information Act more effective. (Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, December 6, 2013, by Emily Grannis) The new commitment to transparency includes the new interagency Classification Review Committee, to foster classification reform. “…because of its interagency character and especially due to its White House leadership, the new Committee has the potential to overcome the autonomous

A reporter banned from his embedded assignment in Afghanistan in 2010 lost a round in federal district court. The military claimed his ejection was justified since his video of wounded soldiers on the Washington Times website violated guidelines by showing identifiable faces of wounded personnel.  (McClatchyDC, December 6, 2013, by Michael Doyle) The freelance reporter Wayne Anderson claimed he had a right to his embedded assignment by virtue of his First Amendment rights to free