Dear friend of press freedom,

After a public call in 2020 from Freedom of the Press Foundation and others, New York’s City Council last year stripped responsibility for administering press credentials from the NYPD, and put it into the hands of the mayor’s office beginning in 2022. Now reporters have taken a look at the new process instituted at the beginning of this year, and discovered that in at least one regard, the mayor’s office asks for more unnecessary and potentially discriminatory data than the police had previously collected.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a good copyright decision concerning portions of an article and its illustrative photograph that had been screenshot and used in media criticism by another outlet. The new decision confirms that such a use is allowed, and finds that it constitutes a “transformative” use of the underlying works. That’s a big win for the ability of journalists to write stories about other media outlets, and an important ruling on a copyright issue that is set to be argued in front of the Supreme Court next term.

Finally, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing late last month on the Freedom of Information Act and its modern administration. We’ve reported previously on how FOIA and other transparency laws have been affected by logistical concerns surrounding the coronavirus pandemic. Senators posed tough questions to the government witnesses present about delays, backlogs, and non-compliance. We encourage and await legislative fixes to a body of law that has served as an incredibly useful reporting tool, but which has failed to keep up with the times.