This is the Daily Media Update published by the Institute for Free Speech. For press inquiries, please contact [email protected].
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In the News
By Arleen Richards
.....Ed. note: IFS client Alison Hair and IFS Senior Attorney Del Kolde speak to NTD News about Forsyth County School District's agreement to pay attorney’s fees in a federal lawsuit brought by a group of parents who were censored at school board meetings.
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New from the Institute for Free Speech
By Alec Greven
.....In January 2023, OpenSecrets, an organization dedicated to tracking money in politics, published the startling claim that in the 2022 election cycle “business interests” spent $3.5 billion dollars. Business interests, they say, outspent labor interests this past election 14 to 1.
These claims are highly misleading; citizens, journalists, and academics should be wary before giving them any credence. Here’s where OpenSecrets’ analysis goes so wrong.
OpenSecrets classifies individual contributions as “business interest” spending when the individual donor is employed by a business. Federal law requires that when anyone gives over $200 to a federal campaign, PAC, or party, they publicly disclose the amount of the donation, their name, address, employer, and occupation. So, OpenSecrets looks at those mandatory disclosures and calls (nearly) anyone who lists their employer as any business a “business interest.”[1] Disclosure laws do not require you to list whether you belong to a union.
The vast majority of voting age Americans are, of course, employed by businesses, so OpenSecrets’ “business interests” total will always be inflated. OpenSecrets even admits that the amount of business spending will be overcounted and the amount of union interest spending will be undercounted. In fact, individual contributions account for nearly $2 billion of the $3.5 billion spent by so-called “business interests.”
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Supreme Court
By Eugene Volokh
.....The question came before the Court in Bd. of Ed. v. Pico, and four Justices (led by Justice Brennan) took the view that "local school boards may not remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books." Four other Justices (led by Chief Justice Burger) expressly rejected this view (except in the narrow situation where the disagreement was based on pure partisanship, for instance if a Democrat-run board removed books because they were written by Republicans or because they praised Republicans). And the swing vote, Justice White, expressly refused to opine on this issue…
My own view is more in line with the dissent: I think a public school is entitled to decide which viewpoints to promote through its own library. The process of selecting library books is part of the government's own judgment about what views it wishes to promote; and the ability to reconsider selection decisions (including in response to pressure from the public, which is to say from the ultimate governors of the public schools) should go with the ability to make those decisions in the first place. To be sure, some such decisions may be foolish or narrow-minded, but they're not unconstitutional.
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The Courts
By Rick Hasen
.....The latest filing in the Dominion lawsuit against Fox News alleges that “During Trump’s campaign, Rupert provided Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner, with Fox confidential information about Biden’s ads, along with debate strategy. [Citation]; Ex. 603 (providing Kushner a preview of Biden’s ads before they were public).”
Rep. Ted Lieu raises the question whether the actions of Murdoch are illegal. Corporations may not make contributions to candidates in any amount (a law that the Supreme Court upheld against constitutional challenge in the 2003 FEC v. Beaumont case). But corporate expenditures by a press entity do not count under the so-called “media exemption” when the press is engaged in normal press functions, like providing commentary or reporting on the news.
In this case (assuming the facts as alleged in the Dominion complaint are true—they may not be), sharing one candidate’s ads that have not aired with a competing candidate does not appear to be part of any press function. The ads were not shared for the purpose of newsgathering or opinion writing. They appear to be outside the context of the media exemption, and potentially illegal.
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Free Expression
By Samuel J. Abrams
.....As the academy gets younger it grows more authoritarian, according to a new survey of over 1,400 faculty members conducted by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). The free speech group's findings portend a dark future for higher education if this course isn't reversed—and if faculty minds don't become more open to dissenting viewpoints.
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By Robby Soave
.....The Global Disinformation Index (GDI)—a British nonprofit that smeared Reason as an unsafe news website using dubious criteria—might want to take a closer look at newly uncovered disinformation being spread by… the website of the Global Disinformation Index.
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Online Speech Platforms
By Lauren Sforza
The platform’s new “Violent Speech Policy” states that users may not “threaten, incite, glorify or express desire for violence or harm” while using the app. This includes encouraging others to conduct harm and celebrating acts of violence.
The policy also prohibits threats “to damage civilian homes and shelters, or infrastructure that is essential to daily, civic, or business activities.”
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.....A major escalation in official online censorship regimes is progressing rapidly in Brazil, with implications for everyone in the democratic world. Under Brazil's new government headed by President Lula da Silva, the country is poised to become the first in the democratic world to implement a law censoring and banning "fake news and disinformation" online, and then punishing those deemed guilty of authoring and spreading it. Such laws already exist throughout the non-democratic world, adopted years ago by the planet's most tyrannical regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey.
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Independent Groups
By Jeremy B. White
.....Democrats are rushing in to replace California Sen. Dianne Feinstein — and so are the Super PACs.
The once-in-a-generation contest for a California Senate seat could unleash a tsunami of outside spending as independent expenditure committees with unlimited fundraising powers work to differentiate Democrats jostling in an open field. And that could lead to the kind of negative broadsides that candidates themselves could be reluctant to level…
It is exorbitantly expensive to run a statewide race in California, where candidates must introduce themselves to millions of voters across several media markets. Independent expenditure committees can bolster those efforts by pulling in big-dollar donations.
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The States
By Paul Gessing
S.B. 42 doubles down on existing New Mexico law by replacing the word “contribution” in the statute with the word “donation.” Current law defines a “contribution” as funds given “for a political purpose.” Therefore, an argument could be made that an organization making IEs is only required to report donors who give “for a political purpose,” even though the context in which the existing law uses this term argues for a broader and general requirement to report all donors. S.B. 42 makes it explicit that donors who give for any purpose – not just “a political purpose” – are required to be reported if an organization makes IEs...
The intent of the bill seems to be to name and shame donors to organizations that speak out about policy issues and to deter those nonprofits from voicing their opinion in public debates.
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By Ron DeSantis
.....On Monday, I signed the law ending the Walt Disney Co.’s self-governing status over 43 square miles in central Florida, an area almost as big as Miami. Disney no longer has its own government…
For more than 50 years, the state of Florida put Disney on a pedestal. That all changed last year, when left-wing activists working at the company’s headquarters in Burbank, Calif., pressured Disney to oppose Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Act. The legislation bans classroom instruction on sexuality and gender ideology in kindergarten through third grade and requires that sex instruction in other grades be age-appropriate. Disney executives were seen on videos boasting about the company’s plans to inject sexuality into its programming for children...
Fiduciary duty aside, most CEOs and directors understand that as a matter of prudence, big companies seldom benefit from taking positions on contentious political issues, particularly those unrelated to their businesses.
In recent years, two factors have altered this calculation.
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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."
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The Institute for Free Speech is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization that promotes and defends the First Amendment rights to freely speak, assemble, publish, and petition the government. Please support the Institute's mission by clicking here. For further information, visit www.ifs.org.
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