Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ broken relationship with the mainstream media could get even worse. At the governor’s urging, Florida’s Republican-dominated Legislature is pushing to weaken state laws that have long protected journalists against defamation suits and frivolous lawsuits. The proposal is part DeSantis’ ongoing feud with media outlets like The New York Times, Miami Herald, CNN and The Washington Post — media companies he claims are biased against Republicans — as he prepares for a likely 2024 presidential bid.
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A North Carolina Superior Court judge put a small-town newspaper editor behind bars last month after one of his reporters used an audio recorder for note-taking […]
The Tegna Foundation, the charitable foundation sponsored by Tegna Inc., today announced a series of grants to promote diversity in journalism and professional development opportunities for media professionals and students. […]
Portland Judge’s Stirring Support Of Free Press
U.S. District Judge Michael H. Simon issued an order last Thursday barring federal officers — for at least 14 days, to allow for further legal action — from requiring journalists and legal observers to “disperse”; from threatening or targeting them violently; or from forcing them to move to remote locations, even when officers are justified in ordering demonstrators to leave a particular area or using force.
“I believe that President Trump is engaged in the most direct sustained assault on freedom of the press in our history,” the Fox News host said to applause at the Newseum, a media museum in Washington.
At least 250 journalists were in jail in relation to their work as of Dec. 1, nonprofit group the Committee to Protect Journalists said Wednesday, naming China, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt the biggest jailers of journalists. The group found that the majority were imprisoned on “anti-state charges.”
Exclusives
The White House Correspondents’ Association typically keeps a low profile in its discussions with the White House press secretary over issues involving the news media. It tends not to wade into controversy, at least not in public. But faced with the president’s continued hostility and confronted by false official statements, the two candidates vying to become president of the group want to take a bolder — and more confrontational — approach.
President Donald Trump violates the First Amendment by exacting retribution on critics in the media, the writers organization PEN America alleges in a new lawsuit. Trump has “intentionally hung a sword of Damocles over the heads of countless writers, journalists and media entities,” PEN America alleges in a complaint filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. “His actions seek to accomplish indirectly what the president cannot do directly: impede professional and investigative journalism, and silence criticism.”
New York Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger said his main purpose for accepting a meeting with President Trump last month was to “raise concerns about the president’s deeply troubling anti-press rhetoric. I told the president directly that I thought that his language was not just divisive but increasingly dangerous,” he said.
Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) issued a long denunciation of President Donald Trump on the Senate floor Wednesday and defended the American free press. “It is past time to stop excusing, or ignoring, or worse, endorsing these attacks on the truth,” said Flake. “For if we compromise the truth for the sake of our politics, we are lost.”
McCain To Trump: Stop Attacking The Press
Ultimately, freedom of information is critical for a democracy to succeed. We become better, stronger and more effective societies by having an informed and engaged public that pushes policymakers to best represent not only our interests but also our values. Journalists play a major role in the promotion and protection of democracy and our unalienable rights, and they must be able to do their jobs freely. Only truth and transparency can guarantee freedom.
Trump Tweets Cast Cloud Over FCC, DOJ
The president’s steady stream of anti-media rants puts government officials like FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and DOJ’s Makan Delrahim in a tough spot. Every time they take an action that negatively affects a news organization that Trump has targeted, they will be accused of acting as an agent for Trump. So, why is Pai making excuses for him?
Trump’s War On The Media Is Truly Dangerous
Trump’s appetite for shutting down the free press is a reminder of his open admiration for strong men dictators like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Recep Erdogan and the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte. Those strongmen limit the freedom of the press and, in some cases, kill and jail journalists.
NEW YORK (AP) — Sunday host Chris Wallace generally lives in peaceful co-existence with Fox News Channel’s opinion folks, except when he hears some of them echo President Donald Trump’s […]
The Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press on Tuesday night announced a $1 million donation from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the biggest gift from an individual in the organization’s 46-year history.
The Pew Research Center poll found that 89 percent of Democrats judged media criticism worth it because it keeps political leaders from doing things they shouldn’t, while only 42 percent of Republicans felt that way. While supporters of a party out of power are generally more interested in seeing reporters dig for news than those in power, the gap hasn’t been nearly this wide since Pew began looking at the question in 1985.
More than 50 journalists, lawyers, media rights advocates, and First Amendment stakeholders came together in Washington last week with a common interest in protecting freedom of the press and securing rights granted by the First Amendment.
Eighteen journalism associations penned an open letter to President-elect Donald Trump Wednesday that requests a full press pool, regular press conferences and a more responsive approach to fulfilling Freedom of Information Act requests. “We expect that you, as the new leader of the free world, will preserve longstanding traditions that ensure coverage of the Trump presidency,” the letter said.
“Today’s media is not monolithic,” NAB CEO Gordon Smith says, and “in a time when … media is becoming incredibly polarized and partisan, local news has become even more valuable to our democratic dialogue.”
Legal experts say whether wrestler Hulk Hogan’s win Friday in his sex tape case against Gawker will have any real implications for the news media largely depends on what happens next. Yet even if the decision against Gawker is upheld in appeals, several legal experts say, its effect on wider press freedoms is very likely to be limited.
The FCC is trying to reassure House Republicans it has no plans to restrict the freedom of the press. In a letter released today, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler told Republican leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee his commission “has no intention of regulating political or other speech of journalists or broadcasters.” Wheeler defended new FCC research as the first step toward pinpointing “market barriers” that might affect the “diversity of media voices.”
