Don’t say Enola Gay
Tens of thousands of students have used the 1619 Project to learn about American slavery and its consequences for U.S. history. But not at Albuquerque Public Schools. There, the Pulitzer Prize-winning report was just one of the thousands of news stories blocked by web filters between January 2022 to August 2023, according to a new report from Wired.
In fact, the school’s filters blocked students from accessing news websites nearly 40,000 times. Some URLs seem to have been flagged for including a single “forbidden” word, like a Time magazine report on the fate of the Enola Gay after it dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
Read more about efforts to stop students from reading the news — both at school and elsewhere — on our blog.
Secret police have no place in Florida (or anywhere)
The Florida Supreme Court decided last week that the names of two officers who shot and killed suspects in separate incidents can be released to the public, despite efforts by a police union to keep them secret.
The court rejected the union’s argument that the names could be shielded under Marsy’s Law, which is meant to protect the privacy of victims. (Yes, you read that right — cops who kill people are invoking victims’ rights laws).
In an op-ed in the Tampa Bay Times, Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) Deputy Advocacy Director Caitlin Vogus explains how police have used Marsy’s Law and other arguments to withhold officer names from public release or even censor the press from reporting information it already has.
Hear victims of newsroom raids tell their stories
The police raid of the Marion County Record in Kansas made national headlines in August. But many may not know that the FBI raided the home newsroom of another journalist in Florida in May. Both cases involve efforts to criminalize reporters accessing publicly available information on the internet.
Join Freedom of the Press Foundation's advocacy team as we talk with Eric Meyer from the Marion County Record and independent Florida journalist Tim Burke. We’ll get the latest updates on their stories and talk about the importance of online newsgathering and what can be done to call attention to press freedom violations like those they experienced.
Register for the event here and tune in on Monday, Dec. 11, at 3 p.m. ET.
Press Freedom in Gaza
Four respected human rights organizations and news outlets — Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Agence France-Presse, and Reuters—all released separate reports concluding the Israeli army likely deliberately fired on journalists, killing one of them, in Lebanon on Oct. 13. Reporters Without Borders reached the same conclusion in October.
If the reports are correct, this would amount to a war crime. The U.S. shouldn't support militaries that recklessly kill journalists but it absolutely shouldn't fund militaries that intentionally kill them. That not only violates every principle the Biden administration claims to stand for, it’s illegal under the Leahy Law.
Here are some other recent stories about the dire situation the press is facing as it attempts to cover the most deadly war for journalists in recent memory.
“Open the gates at Rafah so that journalists can leave and enter Gaza!”
Palestine: ICC chief prosecutor meets Palestinian journalists’ leaders in Ramallah
Gazan journalist says over 20 members of his family were killed in airstrike
Gaza’s Remaining Journalists Are Tired And Running Out Of Hope
What we’re reading
A new Trump administration will ‘come after’ the media, says Kash Patel. Trump can't make it any clearer that he plans to imprison journalists if he gets a second term. Why is the Biden Department of Justice so intent on handing him the perfect precedent to do so by prosecuting Julian Assange for gathering and publishing news?
Brenna Bird accuses national media of supporting terrorism amid Gaza war. Accusing news outlets of knowingly supporting terrorism is serious, and serious people wouldn’t base such a claim on a “report” admitted by its own authors to consist of evidence-free speculation. That means 14 state attorneys general — as well as numerous members of Congress making similar accusations — are not serious people.
Kansas disciplinary panel dismisses complaint against judge who authorized newspaper raid. As Institute of Justice attorney Jared McClain told the Kansas Reflector, “Judges almost never face any consequences when they violate someone’s rights — even when their most obvious errors have tragic results.” The problem is compounded when states allow judges with minimal qualifications to decide important First and Fourth amendment issues.
Independent journalist pushed, arrested at NYC pro-Palestinian march. The New York Police Department arrested a journalist covering a pro-Palestinian march in November. When he came to his court date, he learned they’d never even filed the citation. Apparently the goal was to intimidate him — not to prosecute any actual crime.
FPF Live: The Belmarsh Tribunal
Join us online or in person at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. on Saturday, Dec. 9, at 2 p.m. ET to watch FPF Executive Director Trevor Timm and other First Amendment experts speak about the dangerous press freedom implications of the Julian Assange prosecution. Register for the event here.
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