The Latest News from the Institute for Free Speech June 7, 2023 Click here to subscribe to the Daily Media Update. This is the Daily Media Update published by the Institute for Free Speech. For press inquiries, please contact [email protected]. In the News 23ABC: Bakersfield College history professor sues school administrators, Board of Trustees By Charr Davenport .....A Bakersfield College history professor is suing a number of administrators at the school, including the Interim President, Dean of Instruction, Kern Community College District Chancellor, and the KCCD Board of Trustees. According to the Institute for Free Speech, formerly known as the Center for Competitive Politics, the lawsuit is due to a complaint that BC allegedly punished faculty members for exercising their right of freedom of speech. Professor Daymon Johnson is the faculty lead on campus for the Renegade Institute for Liberty, a coalition of school faculty aiming to "advance American ideals within the broader Western tradition of meritocracy, individual agency, civic virtue, liberty of conscience and free markets." The group says that its goal is to promote and preserve freedom of thought through open discussion of political ideas. The coalition claims that Johnson filed the complaint after his predecessor, Matthew Garrett, was terminated after speaking out against the college's preferred views. Bangor Daily News: The Daily Brief- June 6, 2023 By Michael Shepherd with Billy Kobin .....This lawsuit on money in politics is mostly about power. A conservative legislator's lawsuit against the state over a new campaign finance law flew under the radar last week, but it could have implications for the balance of power between leaders and their most ambitious rank-and-file members. A 2021 law that took effect this year made several changes to the campaign finance regime around legislative races. One of the biggest changes was that it targeted political committees run by individual legislators, barring those so-called "leadership PACs" and candidates themselves from accepting larger contributions and those from businesses and labor groups... "It tilts the political system in favor of entrenched party leadership and other interests, who can continue to raise and spend unlimited funds from unlimited sources in their PACs, and against legislators who may pursue competing political visions, whose PAC functions these limits constrain," the lawsuit reads. It is the first legal test for the new Maine law, but the potential impact and the personalities at play will make it an important one to watch for those invested in the power structure of state politics. Congress Washington Post: These academics studied falsehoods spread by Trump. Now the GOP wants answers. By Naomi Nix and Joseph Menn .....Republican House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan and his allies in Congress are demanding documents from and meetings with leading academics who study disinformation, increasing pressure on a group they accuse of colluding with government officials to suppress conservative speech. Jordan’s colleagues and staffers met Tuesday on Capitol Hill with a frequent target of right-wing activists, University of Washington professor Kate Starbird, two weeks after they interviewed Clemson University professors who also track online propaganda, according to people familiar with the events. Free Expression Daily Caller: Man Arrested While Attempting To Read Bible Verse At Pennsylvania Pride Event By Sarah Weaver .....A video shows Reading, Pennsylvania, police arresting a man after he tries to read a Bible verse during public Pride event... Police told the Daily Caller that Atkins was not arrested for reading the Bible verse, but for his noise levels while doing so. “He was not arrested for reading a bible verse,” a representative for the chief of police told the Caller. “He was arrested for being disorderly.” “His volume was at a level that he was heckling a preplanned and permitted event,” the spokesperson continued. “He was given an area he was allowed to protest in, and was asked to keep volume at a level that was not problematic or that was inciting public inconvenience.” Online Speech Platforms New York Times: Twitter’s U.S. Ad Sales Plunge 59% as Woes Continue By Ryan Mac and Tiffany Hsu .....Twitter’s ad sales staff is concerned that advertisers may be spooked by a rise in hate speech and pornography on the social network, as well as more ads featuring online gambling and marijuana products, the people said. The company has forecast that its U.S. ad revenue this month will be down at least 56 percent each week compared with a year ago, according to one internal document. These issues have been inherited by Linda Yaccarino, the NBCUniversal executive whom Mr. Musk named Twitter’s chief executive last month. She started her new job on Monday. On a Twitter Space audio event on Monday, Mr. Musk said advertisers in Europe and North America have put “extreme pressure” on the company, leading “half our advertising” to disappear. “They are trying to drive Twitter bankrupt,” he said. Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): First (?) Libel-by-AI (ChatGPT) Lawsuit Filed By Eugene Volokh .....It's Walters v. OpenAI L.L.C., No. 23-A-04860-2, filed in Gwinnett County (Georgia) yesterday. An excerpt from the Complaint (and please note both that the Complaint is just an allegation, and that the statements quoted in it about Walters are allegedly entirely made up, not by some human accuser but by a hallucinating AI program): Internet Speech Regulation Wall Street Journal: AI Is the Technocratic Elite’s New Excuse for a Power Grab By Gerard Baker .....What’s the bigger threat to humanity: artificial intelligence or experts demanding that something be done about it? … None of this is to diminish the challenges posed by AI. Thorough investigation into it, and healthy debate about how to maximize its opportunities and minimize its risks, are essential. We should listen to the concerns of those most intimately familiar with its capabilities... But as we hear the usual demands to regulate “misinformation” and “disinformation,” and the warnings about the nefarious ways in which unscrupulous populists will use AI, it seems this latest panic is inducing primarily a familiar, Pavlovian response from those with a predilection for worldwide rule over our private endeavors. When confronted with yet another spectacle of self-anointed experts and technocrats demanding global action to create massive new bureaucratic opportunities for themselves and their like-minded friends, here’s my advice: Beware geeks bearing grifts. Candidates and Campaigns Politico: Got $1 to spare? RNC debate rules trigger a mad dash for very small donors By Jessica Piper .....Perry Johnson is hawking a T-shirt on Facebook with the words “I stand with Tucker,” and a vague artistic likeness of former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. The price? $1. The Michigan businessman and longshot GOP presidential candidate is taking a loss on the deal. But that $1 has more than a dollar in value for candidates who, like Johnson, are engaged in a mad dash for new donors they’ll need to qualify for upcoming debates under the Republican National Committee’s new criteria. Under the new rules, candidates will be required to have at least 40,000 donors to make the Aug. 23 debate stage, including at least 200 from 20 distinct states. They will also have to garner at least 1 percent in three qualifying polls, two of them national, after July 1. And they must commit to supporting the eventual Republican nominee. The Media New York Times: A Reporter Investigated Sexual Misconduct. Then the Attacks Began. By David Enrich .....Attacks on journalists in the United States have become common. Last year, the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker identified 41 journalists who were physically assaulted. In one extreme case, a Nevada politician was charged with murdering a reporter investigating him. Libel lawsuits have been on the rise, too, according to the latest data collected by the Media Law Resource Center. Many legal experts said such suits were often used to punish smaller news organizations for aggressive coverage and to deter others from speaking out. And sometimes, as Ms. Chooljian and New Hampshire Public Radio have learned, the physical and legal threats converge. Their ordeal is a striking example of the perils facing news organizations in an era when politicians regularly demonize journalists and some judges want to curtail the First Amendment protections that the press has long enjoyed. The States Austin American-Statesman: Opinion: It's wrong to force Texans to pay for local-government lobbying By D. Dowd Muska .....Whatever form it takes, taxpayer-funded lobbying is wrong, because it makes citizens subsidize "messaging" they may oppose. As the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 2018 decision, when government compels speech, "individuals are coerced into betraying their convictions," and forcing "free and independent individuals to endorse ideas they find objectionable is always demeaning." The Southwest Public Policy Institute recently published a paper on intragovernmental advocacy in the eight states of the American Southwest. We found that from Austin to Santa Fe to Carson City, taxpayer-funded lobbying is commonplace... It's true that the movement to stop this misuse of tax dollars is associated with the right. But our research revealed that the left should be concerned as well. We documented multiple instances of government deploying its considerable might against the "progressive" policy agenda – for example, combating the reduction of law-enforcement budgets. But here's what's uniquely maddening about local-government lobbying in Texas. The state stands as a national model for prohibiting taxpayer-funded advocacy at the state level. Read an article you think we would be interested in? Send it to Tiffany Donnelly at [email protected]. For email filters, the subject of this email will always begin with "Institute for Free Speech Media Update." The Institute for Free Speech is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization that promotes and defends the political rights to free speech, press, assembly, and petition guaranteed by the First Amendment. Please support the Institute's mission by clicking here. For further information, visit www.ifs.org. Follow the Institute for Free Speech ‌ ‌ ‌ The Institute for Free Speech | 1150 Connecticut Ave., NW, Suite 801, Washington, DC 20036 Unsubscribe [email protected] Update Profile | Constant Contact Data Notice Sent by [email protected]