First Amendment News

ACLU letter to Gates: Don’t use discretionary power to withhold torture photos

The American Civil Liberties Union sent a letter to the Defense Secretary Robert Gates urging him not to use discretionary power in a bill expected to be signed this week to keep secret photos of abuse of detainees held by the U.S. -DB Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press October 21, 2009 By Miranda Fleschert The American Civil Liberties Union has asked the secretary of defense not to exercise his authority to withhold photos

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Entertainment news editor protests LA sheriff’s search of his personal phone records

A Los Angeles editor of TMZ, an online entertainment news outlet, alleged that the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Office obtained a search warrant for his personal phone records because TMZ had reported that Mel Gibson resisted arrest in 2006, a detail that the editor said the sheriff’s department tried to cover up. -DB LA Observed October 19 2009 By Kevin Roderick Venting in depth for the first time about official prying into his personal phone records,

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New report on saving print journalism recommends government subsidies

The New York Times THE MEDIA EQUATION October 19, 2009 By David Carr A Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism report made six recommendations for salvaging newsrooms, among them to require public broadcasting to devote more resources to covering local news. A more controversial idea is to get the government to fund local news with safeguards to keep them from interfering with editorial decisions. The FCC already spend $7 billion a year from telephone bills

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Secret Service denies access to 2009 White House visitor records

After the Obama administration agreed to start releasing visitor logs starting December 31,  the watchdog group Judicial Watch was denied access to White House visitor logs from January 20 through September 15 of this year and does not understand why only these records merit protection. The Secret Service just says the records do not come from a government agency and so are not subject to the Presidential Records Act. -DB The Reporters Committee for Freedom

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Watchdog groups say that data from Recovery Board first posting of stimulus data inaccessible

A number of groups are saying that the first online posting of data on stimulus spending was not accessible to the public difficult to search and incomplete. Critics say the site can be improved by making it so that the public can mount a search by recipient. -DB NextGov October 15, 2009 By Aliya Sternstein Government officials in charge of tracking spending aimed at stimulating the economy released on Thursday unprecedented details of financial transactions, but

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