This is the Daily Media Update published by the Institute for Free Speech. For press inquiries, please contact [email protected].  

Just the News: 'Insanely chilling': Academic freedom suit targets new California college diversity mandates

.....The threat to academic freedom from antiracism orthodoxy is expanding beyond one rural community college district to the entire California Community Colleges system, according to new filings in a professor's First Amendment retaliation and chilling-effects litigation.

Federalist: Congress Must Stop The Executive Branch’s Heinous Attempts To Censor Americans

.....I introduced legislation called the Free Speech Protection Act, which will prohibit federal employees and contractors from using their positions to censor and otherwise attack speech protected by the First Amendment. My legislation will impose penalties for those that violate this rule, as well as empower private citizens to sue the government and executive branch officials for violating their First Amendment rights. Additionally, the bill will mandate frequent publicly accessible reports detailing the communications between an executive branch agency and media organizations, ensure that federal grant money is not used to label media organizations as sources of misinformation or disinformation, and terminates authorities that threaten free speech.

New York Times: Booksellers Move to the Front Lines of the Fight Against Book Bans in Texas

By Alexandra Alter and Elizabeth A. Harris

.....A group of booksellers, publishers and authors filed a lawsuit on Tuesday to stop a new law in Texas that would require stores to rate books based on sexual content, arguing the measure would violate their First Amendment rights and be all but impossible to implement.

Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): "Democrats Have Become Much More Supportive than Republicans of the Government Restricting False Information Online"

.....So reports a new Pew Research poll; the view that "The U.S. government should take steps to restrict FALSE information online, even if it limits people from freely publishing or accessing information" polled at 37%-60% (i.e., mostly against) with Republicans, and 40%-57% with Democrats in 2018 (no statistically significant difference there), but now Republicans are 39%-59% against and Democrats are 70%-28% for. Unsurprising, it seems to me: People's views on the question likely depends on how much you trust the U.S. government's judgment of what is "false information," and Democrats today trust it more than do Republicans.

WAFB: Free speech organization sends letter to LSU Pres. saying grad student shouldn’t be ‘punished’ for voicemail to state lawmaker

By Lester Duhé

.....A non-partisan free speech organization is now getting involved in the case of an LSU graduate student accused of leaving a profanity-laced and what some have called a threatening voicemail to a Louisiana State Senator.

The Dispatch: Fake News Meets Artificial Intelligence

By Yasmin Green

.....For the past five years, in partnership with universities in the U.S. and Europe, we at Jigsaw have researched a technique called “prebunking.” Building on the work of social psychologist William McGuire in the 1960s, prebunking aims to help people recognize and refute manipulative content before they encounter misleading claims. Prebunking requires a simple formula: a warning about future manipulation attempts; a microdose of the manipulation; and a thorough explanation of how that manipulation strategy works. Our applied research on the topic suggests that this simple formulation could scale online: 73 percent of individuals who watched a prebunking video were more likely to consistently spot misleading claims online and prebunking videos running as YouTube ads boosted recognition of manipulation techniques by 5 percent.

New Jersey Monitor: New Jersey’s election watchdog dumps 107 cases after controversial law cuts investigative time

By Dana DiFilippo

.....The state’s election watchdog dismissed almost half its active investigations into reported campaign finance violations Tuesday, four months after state legislators passed a controversial new law critics warned would weaken election protections.

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