Freedom of the Press

Lawyer and professor Alan Dershowitz must reveal who is funding his ongoing defamation lawsuit against CNN, a federal judge ruled.

Credit: YUHSB

A federal judge in Florida ordered lawyer and professor Alan Dershowitz to disclose who is funding his defamation lawsuit against CNN. The ruling is welcome news in an era where billionaires and politicians fund surrogate plaintiffs to punish media adversaries. More rulings like this one could go a long way in protecting newspapers from powerful entities who abuse the legal system to retaliate against stories they do not like.

Defamation suits are intended to compensate plaintiffs for real damages in the rare instances when papers publish something knowingly false — not to allow third parties to exact revenge on the press. Magistrate Judge Patrick M. Hunt got it right in crediting CNN’s argument that, “if Plaintiff has funders supporting this lawsuit to advance an agenda (whether for political, competitive, or other reasons), that information dramatically undercuts Plaintiff’s claim that he is seeking damages for injury to his reputation.”

Dershowitz’s $300 million lawsuit alleges that CNN misrepresented statements he made while representing former President Trump during his impeachment trial. The order to disclose funders came after Dershowitz revealed the existence of an “Alan Dershowitz Legal Defense Fund” in a deposition but subsequently refused to reveal the fund’s supporters.

Hunt’s ruling follows a similar one last year requiring associates of former Republican congressman Devin Nunes to reveal who funded their defamation lawsuit against Hearst Magazine Media — which Nunes himself had previously sued. In that case there were concerns over whether Nunes used the second suit, brought by his associates, to avoid legal defenses that only apply to defamation claims by public figures, like politicians.

Let’s hope this marks the beginning of a backlash against deep-pocketed financiers backing anti-press litigation. The best-known instance of this dangerous practice is Peter Thiel’s bankrolling of a series of lawsuits against Gawker, including one by wrestler Hulk Hogan that ultimately led to a $140 million verdict and bankrupted the publication before it could appeal.

But Gawker’s ordeal is far from the only instance. After losing a case against Mother Jones, for example, billionaire Frank VanderSloot announced a $1 million fund to pay the legal expenses of people seeking to sue the “liberal press.” In Chicago, a prominent police union subbed in five police officers to sue a newspaper after its own case was dismissed. It took eight years for the court to rule that the police officers had not suffered any harm justifying their lawsuit. Organizations and community leaders seeking to silence discussion of Polish collaboration with Nazis have backed lawsuits against media outlets and historians in the US and abroad. There are likely many others we'll never hear about.

At one point, it was largely illegal for third parties to finance litigation if they had a financial stake in the outcome. Most states have repealed their prohibitions on the practice, called “champerty,” and for-profit litigation funding has become a lucrative industry. There may be solid arguments that, in most cases, litigation funding streams can be beneficial — even necessary — in light of the often prohibitive costs of prosecuting lawsuits. But the First Amendment should caution against treating media cases as “most cases.”

Court orders requiring disclosure of financiers are a good first step (although Hunt’s ruling alluded to a confidentiality order that might prevent their identities from becoming public). But more is needed to end the abuse of the court system to retaliate against the press at the behest of the rich and connected. Thirty two states and the District of Columbia have passed anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) laws and Rep. Jamie Raskin introduced the federal SLAPP Protection Act of 2022 in September. Perhaps legislators who value press freedoms should also revisit those archaic protections against champerty.

Credit: Seth Stern

Freedom of the Press Foundation welcomes its new Director of Advocacy, Seth Stern. Seth will oversee and expand the nonprofit organization’s efforts to stand up for journalists and whistleblowers who have been denied their rights as part of its mission to protect, defend, and empower public-interest journalism. His work will include managing ambitious advocacy campaigns in collaboration with FPF partners and writing for FPF’s blogs, social media accounts, and other publications.

Seth spent the last 13 years practicing media and First Amendment law at the Chicago law firm Funkhouser Vegosen Liebman & Dunn. He is the chair of the Chicago Bar Association’s Media and Entertainment Law Committee as well as the American Bar Association’s Media, Privacy and Advertising Law Committee. Before law school he worked as a reporter and editor in the Chicago and Atlanta areas.

“I am honored to have the opportunity to contribute to an organization with a history as rich as Freedom of the Press Foundation’s,” Seth said. “I will always welcome input from our members and friends on how our advocacy team can best assist journalists and advance press rights.”

FPF’s Executive Director Trevor Timm said he is thrilled to welcome Seth to the 10-year-old organization. “We are confident that Seth and his team will build on FPF’s track record of successful advocacy on the national, international, and local levels and take our advocacy work in exciting new directions.”

FPF is a nonprofit organization that protects, defends, and empowers public-interest journalism in the 21st century. For media or other inquiries, email Seth Stern at Seth@freedom.press or media@freedom.press.

Credit: MIKE

This post was originally published as part of our weekly newsletter. For more breaking news and analysis of the state of press freedom in the U.S., subscribe here.

An Ohio newspaper editor was charged with felony wiretapping for publishing audio that a source recorded during a high profile murder trial. In other words, he was arrested for practicing journalism.

The charges against Derek Myers of the Scioto Valley Guardian ignore the Supreme Court’s recognition over two decades ago that reporters are not to blame for unlawful recordings by sources. In fact, the issue has been settled since the Pentagon Papers. It’s up to judges, not journalists, to enforce courtroom confidentiality rules.

The ordeal should alarm all those who value press freedoms. Abuses of state and local law to target journalists are every bit as dangerous as abuses of the Espionage Act at the federal level but they often fly under the radar. Myers’ arrest is even more disturbing considering that the judge presiding over the murder trial, Randy Deering, may have harbored a personal grudge against Myers for successfully challenging his prior ban on filming witnesses.

The Guardian’s troubles did not end with Myers’ arrest. Another judge, Anthony Moraleja, approved a search warrant that led to the seizure of the laptop the Guardian had been using to livestream the trial and his cellphone was seized as well. As the Committee to Protect Journalists noted, the seizure — presumably intended to discover the source of the audio recording — ignores Ohio’s shield law and the federal Privacy Protection Act. In addition to violating Myers’ personal rights and preventing the Guardian from continuing its livestream, the warrant and seizure will surely have a chilling effect on sources who may have thought they could rely on the law to keep their identities secret.

That Myers could face prison time and property seizures notwithstanding Supreme Court precedent and supposed legal protections goes to show that journalists cannot depend on the law alone. It’s vital that judges and other local officials face a strong public backlash when they harass journalists and ignore press freedoms.

What we’re reading:

• Settlement reached in suits over FBI posing as AP reporter: The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press settled lawsuits filed in reaction to an FBI agent posing as an AP reporter in 2007 to deliver surveillance software to a teenager suspected of a bomb threat. We commend RCFP and AP for holding the government accountable for this inexcusable practice.
• Trump Keeps Musing About Journalists Being Raped in Prison — He’s Not Joking: Trump continued his disturbing rhetoric regarding the news media by again suggesting that authorities investigating leaks threaten reporters with prison time. “When the reporter learns he’s going to be married to a certain prisoner who’s extremely strong, tough, and mean, he will say, ‘you know, I think I’m going to give you the information.”. These kinds of threats from possible presidential hopefuls are precisely why Sen. Dick Durbin needs to push the PRESS Act through the Senate rather than leave journalists to rely on easily changeable DOJ policies.
• State Dept. gives law enforcement, intelligence agencies unrestricted access to Americans' personal data: Sen. Ron Wyden sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken demanding an explanation for the State Department’s granting access to law enforcement and intelligence agencies to personal data of Americans obtained from passport applications. We await Blinken’s answers regarding this disturbing development.
• How America Turned Against the First Amendment: “Moderation laws. Book bans. Courts that keep getting played. America’s politicians are tired of the First Amendment getting in their way, and no one seems to care.” Well, some of us care, but a powerful argument nonetheless. We agree that politicians must stop preying on concerns about new technologies to try to confuse the public into rolling back long-established free speech protections.

Sen. Dick Durbin, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee

Credit: Center for American Progress Action Fund

In its waning weeks, the 117th Congress has a historic chance to pass legislation that would do more to protect press freedom than any bill in modern history. Already passed by the House, the fate of the PRESS Act is now in the hands of Sen. Dick Durbin, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who can make sure this bill advances closer to a full vote in the Senate.

The Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying (PRESS) Act, first introduced by Sen. Ron Wyden last year, is the strongest reporter’s shield bill to come through Congress that we’ve ever seen. It would prevent the government from spying on journalists in all but the most emergency situations and protect them from testifying against their sources.

After myriad surveillance scandals under both the Obama and Trump administrations, the Biden Department of Justice has just issued new internal guidelines that restricts the surveillance of journalists who are doing their jobs. Our friends at Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press called the rules a “watershed moment,” and it is certainly welcome news.

However, perhaps the most important provision in these new internal rules is the very last paragraph:

This section is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

In short, these new DOJ guidelines do not have the force of law. They can also be changed at the stroke of a pen, or on the whims of the White House or attorney general, present or future.

Wyden’s PRESS Act, which we’ve previously endorsed, closely mirrors the DOJ guidelines and would enshrine these important press protections in the law. It would mean a future president could not go back to spying on journalists, like so many in the past have done. (Donald Trump just mused on the campaign trail about threatening journalists with prison to get them to reveal their sources, after all).

The PRESS Act would make these protections permanent and allow courts to hold officials accountable who break them.

The House quietly passed its version of the PRESS Act in September by voice vote, which means that if the bill actually comes up for a vote in the Senate it may be viewed as an uncontroversial and non-partisan issue.

But in the Senate, the bill needs to sign off from the Judiciary Committee before it can move forward for a full vote. Durbin, who has been supportive of press freedom and civil liberties issues in the past, can be this bill’s champion by quickly giving it his blessing in his role as Judiciary chairman. We urge Durbin to “hotline” — advance the bill without a markup by the committee — so it can be voted on before this Congress adjourns for good in January.

You can contact Durbin’s office and ask him to support the PRESS Act by calling 202-224-2152 or using this contact form.

If you’re unsure about what to say, you can repeat this language provided by our friends at Demand Progress, which also has a petition on the issue:

Sen. Durbin – I urge you to advance the PRESS Act, legislation just unanimously passed by the House. The PRESS Act would shield journalists from being forced to give up sources and block government seizure of phone and email records. These rights are absolutely essential in any functioning democracy.

If you are a resident of Illinois, Durbin’s home state, your voice is especially important. So please call or email Durbin’s office as soon as you can — time is of the essence. With Congress potentially switching hands in a few months, we might not see another opportunity like this in years.

At a rally this weekend, former President Donald Trump continued to attack the media, suggesting imprisonment for journalists who publish leaked materials.

Credit: Gage Skidmore (FILE)

This post was originally published as part of our weekly newsletter. For more breaking news and analysis of the state of press freedom in the U.S., subscribe here.

At a Texas rally this weekend, Donald Trump called for law enforcement to go after journalists and publishers to find who leaked the Supreme Court’s draft Dobbs opinion earlier this year. In a rambling and occasionally vulgar speech, the former president suggested investigators could claim the leak was a national security issue, and threaten the reporters and their outlets with prison violence. These comments echoed similar remarks he’d posted to Truth Social this summer.

Trump’s heinous positions are hardly new: As a public figure, then as a candidate, then as president, then as a defeated former executive, he has repeatedly voiced similarly objectionable views on the value of press freedom in this country.

It’s a stark reminder that future presidents may attempt to imprison journalists who report on the machinations of secret government.

It’s also why, ever since the Trump administration initiated the prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, we’ve warned that the dangerous precedent set by the case could easily be used against national security reporters at The New York Times, The Washington Post and everywhere else.

Those charges received condemnation from top American news organizations and nearly every major international human rights group when they were filed in 2019, but the DOJ under Biden continues to pursue them. Freedom of the Press Foundation is among the more than two dozen groups that have repeatedly called for the Department of Justice to drop the charges. Those demands have only picked up this month as Assange tested positive for COVID while awaiting extradition in a U.K. prison.

Yesterday, the DOJ released important guidelines that would virtually bar the surveillance of journalists doing their jobs. But until the department breaks meaningfully with its predecessor’s disregard for the First Amendment and drops the charges against Assange, future administrations (Trump is likely to run again, after all) will have been handed all the tools they need to imprison journalists they do not like.

What we’re reading:

• Knight Institute sues CIA and other agencies to obtain intelligence report on Khashoggi murder: The Columbia University-based First Amendment organization filed a FOIA lawsuit seeking the still-withheld report on the slain journalist’s 2018 murder.
• LAPD launches criminal probe of racist leak at request of Martinez, De León, Cedillo: The Los Angeles police chief announced that his department has initiated a criminal investigation into the leaked recording that has shaken city politics for weeks. Experts note that the anonymous poster who published the recording to Reddit could invoke California’s shield law, which protects a reporter’s privilege not to disclose sources.
• Iran’s media blackout sets the stage for state violence: Brutal crackdowns to protests in Iran have intensified as the government blocks reporters from documenting the scene. “There are no journalists on the ground. No journalists are allowed to work in these situations. Unless you are working for the regime,” said the editor-in-chief of an Iranian fact-checking organization.
• Charges — and punishments — for J6 rioters who hurt journalists, damaged news equipment: Our U.S. Press Freedom Tracker documented 18 journalists assaulted during the riots and tens of thousands of dollars of news equipment damaged. Last week, a rioter was sentenced to nearly three years in prison for his actions that day, including the assault of an Associated Press photographer. It’s the first sentencing to include crimes on the media.

Credit: Joe Ravi

A Texas law that would force social media companies to host objectionable content is once again suspended while litigants request the Supreme Court weigh in on the issue. Last week the Fifth Circuit blocked the notorious legislation, known as H.B. 20, from taking effect until at least December, putting on hold its own controversial September ruling that seemingly disregards a century of First Amendment law. The statute had previously made a trip to the Supreme Court, where an unusual 5-4 majority granted a request for an emergency stay through its opaque “shadow docket” process.

The Texas law is one of a handful passed in Republican-led state legislatures aimed at making social media platforms carry a variety of users’ opinions — whether those websites want to or not. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis waded into the fray last May with a similar law that has now been temporarily blocked by both a federal district court and the Eleventh Circuit. Earlier this month, Florida petitioned the Supreme Court to overturn that order. Between these two petitions and the recently granted challenges to CDA Section 230 (a key protection for online speech), this Supreme Court term could have major First Amendment implications.

The earlier Texas decision upholding H.B. 20 attempts to draw a legal distinction between the judgment exercised in social media moderation and that used by newspaper editors. But if legislators and courts can use this sort of blatantly unconstitutional law to dictate what social media companies must host, it’s not hard to imagine they’d try the same with news outlets next.

In fact, we’ve already seen the outlines of that effort, through campaigns to erode the First Amendment rights enshrined by cases like New York Times v. Sullivan. Those rights were hard-fought, and far from inevitable. Although the Texas and Florida laws may have only an indirect impact on newsrooms for now, they represent an open front in an ongoing press freedom battle.

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What we’re reading:

• David Kaye: Here’s what world leaders must do about spyware: The former U.N. Special Rapporteur describes the problem with commercial spyware, which has been used to target journalists across the globe, and lays out a plan to curb its abuse.
• Gannett announces new cuts including mandatory unpaid leave and buyouts: The largest newspaper chain in the United States continues to struggle financially, especially since a 2019 merger with GateHouse left the combined company saddled with $1 billion in debt. Yet they have no problem doing massive stock buybacks!
• Newspapers with a partisan aim filling the void of traditional media: As local newspapers have reduced their coverage or disappeared altogether, outlets with a new model have stepped into the void in some political battleground states. Partisan publications with the trappings of traditional papers have resources and reach — and journalism educators are alarmed.
• KC photographer shoved to ground by NFL player after game: Photographer Park Zebley was shoved to the ground by a Raiders wide receiver. Our U.S. Press Freedom Tracker confirmed with Zebley’s attorney that he suffered a headache, whiplash and a concussion from the incident. The player, Davante Adams, has been charged with misdemeanor assault. Follow our U.S. Press Freedom Tracker for more.
• Journalists in US Moving Closer to Improved Legal Protections: Two separate bills are making their way through Congress that would block federal law enforcement from subpoenaing media workers’ records and shield them against certain lawsuits.

Los Angeles City Hall

Credit: chrisinphilly5448

Leaked audio of Los Angeles politicians engaging in crass and racist conversation has roiled local politics for days after it was posted anonymously to Reddit over the weekend. Since then, the president of the city’s unusually powerful council renounced that title, announced she would take a leave of absence, then resigned yesterday. Figures as prominent as President Joe Biden had called for her resignation, as well as those of other council members caught on tape. The head of the influential Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, who was also a participant in the conversation, has resigned.

The audio and ensuing reporting are undeniably newsworthy, and the resulting shake-up could transform the political situation in the country’s second largest city. But as is so often the case, some have treated the leak itself as the “real” transgression. A representative for the Federation of Labor sent a letter warning The Los Angeles Times that the conversation had been illegally recorded. (To its credit, the LA Times responded by noting that U.S. law does “not prohibit or punish the receipt and publication of newsworthy information.”) The group appears to have successfully removed what it calls the “illegal” audio from Reddit, per an internal memo that was, yes, leaked to the press.

Unauthorized leaks are frequently the source of critically important stories, but there is almost always a chorus of complaints that the origin of this reporting somehow taints the reporting. That’s nonsense. A central mission of Freedom of the Press Foundation — through its security trainings for journalists, development of SecureDrop software for encrypted anonymous communication, and advocacy for legal protections for reporters covering sensitive material — is to foster an environment where important leaks can get the fearless press coverage they deserve.

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What we’re reading:

• PACER users to receive refunds in $125 million settlement with U.S. judiciary: The U.S. government has agreed to refund up to $350 in fees incurred between 2010 and 2018 by users of PACER, the federal system for accessing court records. This settlement only covers past charges, but legislators are considering a proposal to free PACER going forward, which we have strongly endorsed.
• Warriors ‘aggressively investigating’ who leaked the Draymond Green punch video to TMZ: The Golden State Warriors are reportedly pursuing “every legal course of action” to find the leaker of a video that shows a physical altercation between superstars Draymond Green and Jordan Poole. Local sports reporters have defended the newsworthiness of the leak.
• Iranian security forces step up arrests of journalists amid anti-state protests: At least 28 journalists have been arrested in Iran over the past month as the government violently cracks down on protests in that country, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. The protests began over the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested for allegedly violating morality codes about conservative dress. Freedom of the Press Foundation condemns both the crackdowns and these arrests.
• Fight over social media’s role in terror content goes to Supreme Court: The Supreme Court agreed last week to hear two cases about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, one of the most important laws underpinning the Internet. Both cases pertain to content related to supposed terrorism-related content posted by users to social media sites.
• Devices illegally seized in investigation of reporter’s murder, Review-Journal argues: A judge this week granted the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s request to block authorities from reviewing devices seized from the home of slain reporter Jeff German, which are expected to include source names and notes. FPF — and dozens of press freedom advocacy and news outlets — argue the temporary injunction should be permanent. Our U.S. Press Freedom Tracker is following the device search and seizure.

Credit: formulanone

As soon as it was revealed last week that the Espionage Act was among the statutes included in the search warrant targeting reams of classified documents allegedly kept in former president Donald Trump’s Florida residence, pundits — and everyone on Twitter — started wildly speculating, and in the process, spread a lot of misinformation about one of the country’s most controversial laws.

Commentators immediately leapt onto the inclusion of 18 U.S.C 793 (also known as part of the Espionage Act) in the list of statutes named in the warrant targeting Mar-a-Lago that led to the raid. For example, this tweet, claiming the citation of the law must mean the Department of Justice has evidence of outright espionage, was re-tweeted more than 10,000 times and is full of assertions about the law that are misleading or outright false.

For the warrant to cover the Espionage Act, there had to be PROBABLE CAUSE of espionage.

Not just a “what if Trump gave classified docs to foreign agents.”

There was PROOF presented to the judge — witness testimony, video footage, other documents, something. Tangible proof.

— Tristan Snell (@TristanSnell) August 12, 2022

There are countless other Twitter posts along the same lines. As everyone on Twitter was working themselves up into a frenzy over the idea that Trump was now probably involved in some sort of foreign spying operation, the Intercept’s great reporter Ken Klippenstein gently reminded everyone that the only thing the Espionage Act actually requires is for a person to retain “national defense information” (which often means, but is not exclusive to, “classified information”) and not give it back when asked to by the government.

Why is this fact-check relevant to us at Freedom of the Press Foundation? Well, as we have written many times, the Espionage Act is an incredibly broad law. No proof or probable cause of actual “espionage” is required to be investigated or charged under 18 U.S.C. 793. Critically, despite its name, the Espionage Act is not primarily used to go after spies, but whistleblowers and the sources of journalists.

The law has been increasingly wielded in recent years to stifle dissent and vital journalism that would not come to light without brave people coming forward to reporters at great risk to themselves. Whistleblowers who have exposed illegal surveillance, torture, extrajudicial drone strikes, civil liberties violations, even attempts by Russia to allegedly hack into our election infrastructure have been imprisoned under the law.

The very polarizing opinions about Trump have clouded an important debate about this draconian statute that should be reformed or repealed. Republican Senator Rand Paul was relentlessly mocked for tweeting, “The espionage act was abused from the beginning to jail dissenters of WWI. It is long past time to repeal this egregious affront to the 1st Amendment.”

Are Paul’s motives here cynical or opportunistic (or even hypocritical based on his previous remarks)? Sure, of course. But it doesn’t mean he’s wrong.

On the Espionage Act’s 100th-year anniversary we published a detailed, three-part history of the law and how it has been used for decades to imprison the sources of journalists who reveal classified information showing wrongdoing, abuse, or illegality. Even less known is how it has been wielded to threaten award-winning reporters with prosecution who exercise their First Amendment rights to publish those secrets.

Worse still, when sources or whistleblowers are charged under the statute they are prevented from telling their jury what their motive was for speaking with a journalist, why the material may have been misclassified, or that releasing it did not actually harm national security. All this essentially means that those charged under the statute have no legitimate defense at trial.

In fact, one of the administrations that has abused the Espionage Act the most is… Donald Trump’s. His Justice Department brought at least five Espionage Act prosecutions against the sources of journalists, according to our U.S. Press Freedom Tracker. None of the defendants were ever accused of “espionage” in the traditional sense – only that they handed over material to reporters or publishers who produced news stories about it.

The Justice Department under Trump also took the law a step farther than any administration before it and initiated a prosecution of a publisher of government secrets as well. Virtually every major civil liberties group in the world has repeatedly asked the Biden administration to drop the charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, given they could eventually criminalize a lot of national security journalism practiced at many of the nation’s most respected newspapers.

It’s true, as many have pointed out, that whistleblower Reality Winner received five years in jail for leaking a single classified document to a news organization. It’s incredibly important that Trump, or any ex-president, is treated the same as any other citizen. Double standards for powerful people are often prevalent, especially when it comes to retaining or leaking classified information.

The real travesty, however, is not that Trump isn’t already in handcuffs under the Espionage Act, but that Winner was sentenced to five years for a “crime” for which she never should have been in prison in the first place. (I’ve written extensively about the importance of Winner’s leak to the public interest, how overclassification is rampant, and how she was unable to tell a jury why she did what she did.)

To be clear, no one is arguing that Trump is a whistleblower or acting as a journalist. That’s preposterous. Other First Amendment scholars we respect have argued that in this particular case the law is not being abused. But the Espionage Act is pernicious, and we are very wary of any move to further legitimize its use. (By the way, if the Espionage Act was somehow repealed it wouldn’t make Trump’s legal difficulties around the raid magically go away. The Trump warrant cited multiple additional statutes of which he may very well be in violation.)

Just last month, we wrote about an important amendment, introduced by Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib, that would meaningfully reform the Espionage Act to make sure that whistleblowers are allowed to tell their story to a jury if the Justice Department attempts to prosecute them. If Republicans actually want to put their money where their mouths are, they should immediately support Tlaib’s amendment or similar bills. If not, we will know it’s all just posturing.

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Today marks five years since we launched the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a project of Freedom of the Press Foundation and the Committee to Protect Journalists.

In our six years of documentation — the canonical database for press freedom violations in the United States dates to January 2017 — the Tracker team has documented more than 1600 incidents across nearly a dozen categories, affecting more than 1100 journalists and news organizations. We’ve published more than 100 in-depth analyses of press freedom issues.

The Aug. 2, 2017 tweet announcing launch of the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker

The Tracker’s origin story started well before 2017. The Obama administration was wrapping up eight years of aggressively prosecuting leaks to journalists, a presidential candidate named Donald Trump was openly antagonistic against the media and law enforcement in Ferguson, Missouri, was targeting journalists with crowd-control munitions and arresting more than two dozen covering Black Lives Matter protests after the police-shooting death of Michael Brown there.

Leading press freedom advocates from the U.S. and United Kingdom believed that a nonpartisan site for press freedom incidents in the states would not only serve advocacy efforts, but also inform journalism and legal action. That vision proved prescient; the Tracker is the authoritative site for aggressions against journalists in the U.S., cited in legislation, news stories and the backbone for advocacy efforts around press rights.

To date, we’ve documented nearly 1000 assaults of journalists and 300 arrests or detainments, more than 50 border stops and 250 reports of damaged equipment. More than 140 subpoenas are captured in the site.

A snapshot of 2020 press freedom violations as captured by the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker

Tracker Fact

In six years, the most press freedom violations were recorded in 2020; More journalists were assaulted in the one week immediately following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis than 2017-2019, combined.

The site itself went through a major redesign this year; It now boasts new data visualization capabilities, smarter search functions and increased speeds for downloading the data with our API. The site runs on open source software as of 2020 and the content is available for republication under a creative commons license.

Tracker Fact

State with the fewest documented press freedom incidents: Wyoming (0)

State with the most documented press freedom incidents: Oregon (260)

The Tracker is uniquely positioned to give both a real-time view of aggressions against the media (we live-tracked as 18 journalists were assaulted while covering the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol) while also capturing trends over time (eight individuals have since been charged with crimes for those assaults). It’s how we can tell you that at least 60 journalists have sued law enforcement following their treatment at protests since 2017 and that by the time Twitter permanently suspended his account on Jan. 8, then-President Trump had posted 2,520 tweets degrading journalists and the media as a whole.

We don’t know what the state of press freedom in the U.S. will look like in the years ahead, but we know it is best served with a robust and well-maintained Tracker in its press freedom watchdog role.

Photo credit: MPAC National

For years now, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has been abusing the Espionage Act – the 100+-year-old law meant for spies – to prosecute the sources of journalists who disclose newsworthy information to newspapers in order to inform the American public.

We’ve written a lot about how the draconian law is incredibly unjust and leads to unfair show trials for brave whistleblowers who take great risks to expose the truth. For example, the Espionage Act does not allow a defendant to tell the jury why they spoke with a reporter (even if their reason was to expose illegality or unconstitutional programs). They also cannot argue that the information they disclosed to a journalist was improperly classified, or that the disclosure caused no actual harm to national security.

Recently, the DOJ — first under President Trump and continued under the Biden administration — has taken the Espionage Act an ominous step further and is attempting to wield the law against publishers. It’s a dangerous gambit that could potentially criminalize national security journalism at the nation’s largest and most influential newspapers.

But that all could potentially change if Congress adopts Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s excellent new amendment to Congress’s annual National Defense Authorization Act.

This amendment is by far the best reform we’ve seen come through Congress since we’ve been tracking this issue. As our friends at Defending Rights & Dissent explain, this bill proposes several vital reforms to make sure whistleblowers and journalists aren’t unjustly persecuted, while still enabling the Espionage Act to be used against actual spies:

• Requires the government prove specific intent to injure the United States
• Requires that the information exposed was actually properly classified
• Permits a defendant charged under the Espionage Act to testify as to their purpose for disclosing the information
• Creates a public interest defense.
• Additionally, the amendment would undermine the government’s effort to prosecute Julian Assange - or any future publisher or journalist - under the Espionage Act by excluding journalists, publishers, and members of the general public from its jurisdiction.

Please follow this link to tell your member of Congress they need to support this bill! The next few days will be critical in determining whether this amendment will make it into the final version of the NDAA.

Our sincere thanks to Rep. Tlaib and her staff for crafting such a vital and thoughtful bill that could do more to help journalists and whistleblowers than anything Congress has passed in decades.

Federal law enforcement officers patrol Washington, D.C., in 2021. A recent Supreme Court ruling closed the door on journalists seeking monetary damages for First Amendment violations by federal employees.

— REUTERS/JIM URQUHART

This article is cross-posted from U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.

In a Supreme Court term packed with controversial cases, one of the more-overlooked rulings has alarmed press freedom advocates as it gutted the legal mechanism used to hold federal officers liable for violating individuals’ constitutional rights.

The court ruled on partisan lines in Egbert v. Boule on June 8, 2022, significantly limiting the path for monetary damages following unlawful searches or excessive use of force and closing the door for First Amendment retaliation claims.

Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press called the ruling an unfortunate blow to efforts to hold federal officers accountable. In its amicus brief to the court, it argued that the press is a “tempting target for federal officials seeking to retaliate against reporting on matters of public concern.” More than 30 media and advocacy organizations, including Freedom of the Press Foundation, signed on to the brief.

For documentary photographer Rian Dundon, the lawsuit he filed against more than 100 federal officers in April under similar precedents now faces an uncertain future.

Dundon is one of at least 50 journalists who have sued law enforcement officers, agencies or city officials for their treatment while covering the national protests sparked by the murder of George Floyd in May 2020. Dundon was assaulted by federal law enforcement twice that July while covering protests in Portland, Oregon.

Nicholas Kahl, an attorney representing Dundon, told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that Dundon’s suit aims to establish not only that the federal officers used excessive use of force but targeted Dundon because he is a journalist, in violation of the First Amendment.

“It isn’t about: Did this officer hit Rian? That’s obvious from the footage,” Kahl said. “The question is: Will we be able to get into why they did it? Will we be able to ask those questions? Will we get discovery on the motivations of the federal government in the policing of journalists around those protests and the Black Lives Matter movement?”

The majority of lawsuits filed by journalists have been against law enforcement agencies and officers at the state and local levels. While suits like Dundon’s are in the minority, the Tracker is aware of at least six other journalists suing federal officers, all of which now face a similarly limited path.

The path to holding federal officers accountable

The case before the court involved Robert Boule, the owner of a bed-and-breakfast abutting the Canadian border in Washington, who alleged that a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer assaulted and retaliated against him after he filed a complaint with the agency. Boule’s claims for damages were made under Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, a 1971 Supreme Court case that established that federal officers can be personally sued and held financially liable for conducting unreasonable searches.

Gillian Vernick, a Technology and Press Freedom Project Fellow at RCFP who helped author the organization’s amicus brief in Boule, told the Tracker that circuit courts across the country have largely recognized that Bivens logically extends to First Amendment violations.

“It plays a critical role in deterring unconstitutional misconduct by federal officers and compensating for those damages. It’s really a severe consequence,” Vernick said.

The Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit came to that conclusion in 2020 when ruling in favor of Boule’s assertion that his freedom of speech was violated.

While the Supreme Court initially extended the Bivens remedy — allowing for monetary damages in claims against federal employees — to include other constitutional violations over the last 50 years, it made clear in a 2017 case that further expansions were unlikely.

The ruling in Egbert v. Boule went further, all but overturning the initial Bivens ruling; Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that he was prepared to do just that. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the majority decision that moving forward all federal courts must reject Bivens lawsuits if even one “rational reason” can be found to do so.

A dark, uncertain future for Bivens

In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor reasoned that while almost all such claims may be dismissed under this new standard, the Bivens decision remains a viable pathway for relief for some.

“Although today’s opinion will make it harder for plaintiffs to bring a successful Bivens claim, even in the Fourth Amendment context,” Sotomayor wrote, “the lower courts should not read it to render Bivens a dead letter.”

Margaret Russell, an associate professor of law at Santa Clara University, took a more dour perspective, telling the Tracker that plaintiffs will face far more than an uphill battle even when making excessive use of force claims and that the future of Bivens is clearly under threat.

“It’s chopping Bivens to pieces without yet overruling it, but I think that clearly is the direction they’re going in,” Russell said. She added that the new directives may make it impossible for plaintiffs to make a successful claim unless the case is more or less identical to Bivens.

“Everyone is impacted by the narrowing of the Bivens decision,” Russell told the Tracker, “but journalists certainly, when they are the victims of excessive use of force by a federal officer. There is an ancillary effect on the news that they’re trying to report.”

Russell said that Bivens provides one of the only paths for holding federal agents accountable for constitutional violations. While a federal law authorizes suits against state and local authorities, no such statute exists for federal officers. The laws that do pertain to filing lawsuits against federal employees explicitly exclude any claims involving constitutional violations.

The shortcomings and failings of other remedies

Other remedies — such as filing a complaint with the agency or seeking a preliminary or permanent injunction — have significant limitations or pitfalls.

Kelly Simon, ACLU of Oregon Legal Director, is one of the attorneys representing a collection of media plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the City of Portland, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Marshals Service and 60 federal and local law enforcement officers.

The class action suit was filed in May 2020, following hundreds of assaults and arrests of journalists in the city while covering social justice protests. That July, a judge granted a preliminary injunction barring both the Portland Police Bureau and federal officers from arresting, harming or impeding the work of journalists or legal observers of the protests.

Simon told the Tracker that while preliminary injunctions can provide temporary relief from ongoing violations, they can only be granted in instances where plaintiffs are able to show that future violations against them are likely.

The order in the ACLU’s suit was lifted in March 2022, when the court deemed it moot, Simon said. “When circumstances change and there’s no longer a need for it or a case is no longer live between plaintiffs and defendants, when there’s no live controversy, the court essentially says no relief is available.”

The case is still in its early stages, Simon said, and they remain open to reaching a settlement agreement that will include concrete policy changes.

“I still have hope that the United States government will be willing to come to the table and consider very reasonable protections for journalists and legal observers trying to ensure that there is transparency in government operations,” Simon said.

While individuals can file a complaint with the agency itself when federal officers violate their rights, Santa Clara law professor Russell told the Tracker she doesn’t see it as an effective remedy.

“An agency determination of a grievance is not the same as a court action,” Russell said, “and the people who decide that claim come from that world of law enforcement itself.”

Turning the spotlight to the legislature

In the majority decision, Justice Thomas acknowledged that agency review may not be an adequate remedy and noted that officers might be too fearful of personal liability if Bivens were expanded to include First Amendment violations. All of the justices agreed that the answer to both is the same: that the legislature must ultimately establish how to effectively address constitutional violations.

The outlook for such legislation remains grim. For example, the Justice in Policing Act passed by the House of Representatives in June 2020 abolishes legal protections for state law enforcement officers who violate constitutional rights but does not extend the same provision to their federal counterparts.

Simon, of the ACLU of Oregon, told the Tracker that while the path to holding federal officers accountable for constitutional violations has become steeper, efforts must be redirected to the local level.

“A lot of the constitutional violations that we see in this country are the product of state and local law enforcement action,” Simon said. “We should still be focused on doing everything we can at the local level to protect civil rights against abusive law enforcement practices.”

Londres (Reino Unido), 18 de Agosto 2014

The British home secretary has formally approved the extradition of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange to the United States, in the latest development in a dangerous and misguided criminal prosecution that has the potential to criminalize national security journalism in the United States.

Previously, a major coalition of civil liberties organizations, including Freedom of the Press Foundation, implored U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to drop the case against Assange in the name of protecting the rights of journalists everywhere. So, too, have the editors of major news outlets such as The New York Times and Washington Post.

By continuing to extradite Assange, the Biden DOJ is ignoring the dire warnings of virtually every major civil liberties and human rights organization in the country that the case will do irreparable damage to basic press freedom rights of U.S. reporters.

The prosecution, which includes 17 charges under the Espionage Act and one under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, covers events that took place more than a decade ago, but was brought only under the Trump administration — after the Obama Department of Justice reportedly considered charges but dismissed them for their dangerous First Amendment implications.

Reports suggest Assange may have at least one more avenue of appeal, so he may not be on a flight to the United States just yet. But this is one more troubling development in a case that could upend journalists’ rights in the 21st century.

You don’t have to like Assange or his political opinions at all to grasp the dangerous nature of this case for journalists everywhere, either. Even if you don’t consider him a “journalist,” much of the activity described in the charges against him is common newsgathering practices. A successful conviction would potentially make receiving classified information, asking for sources for more information, and publishing certain types of classified information a crime. Journalists, of course, engage in all these activities regularly.

There is some historical irony in the fact that this extradition announcement falls during the anniversary of the Pentagon Papers trial, which began with the Times publication of stories based on the legendary leak on June 13, 1971, and continued through the seminal Supreme Court opinion rejecting prior restraint on June 30, 1971.

In the months and years following that debacle, whistleblower (and FPF co-founder) Daniel Ellsberg became the first journalistic source to be charged under the Espionage Act. What many do not know is that the Nixon administration attempted to prosecute Times reporter Neil Sheehan for receiving the Pentagon Papers as well — under a very similar legal theory the Justice Department is using against Assange.

Thankfully, that prosecution failed. And until this one does too, we continue to urge the Biden administration to drop this prosecution. Every day it continues to further undermine the First Amendment.

CC BY 2.0 Don Holloway

Police in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York, have used the aftermath of mass shootings to clamp down on press access and have threatened to violate the press freedom rights of journalists doing their jobs. According to recent reporting by the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, as tragedy unfolded in each of these cities, reporters have faced unnecessary hurdles erected by law enforcement and public officials, with some going as far as warning the reporters will be arrested.

Nearly two weeks before the Uvalde school shooting, a gunman killed 10 people in a Buffalo, New York, supermarket. Los Angeles Times reporter Connor Sheets said he was in Conklin, New York, a few days after the shooting when Sheriff’s deputies escorted him away from the alleged shooter's high school. The next day, deputies demanded that he also leave the school district’s central office and once again escorted him away from the building. "This restriction of media access seems to be part of the post-mass-shooting playbook," Sheets wrote in a tweet.

“These kinds of practices limit access to public information and can make it harder for journalists to do their jobs,” Sheets told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.

Sheets’s reference to a “playbook” is salient — this can’t be written off as the missteps of a particular agency or official, given the similar events we’ve seen in Uvalde:

[O]n June 1, a CNN crew visited the Uvalde school district headquarters, where police officers told the journalists they were trespassing and threatened to arrest them if they stepped back on the property. Correspondent Shimon Prokupecz recorded the interaction with Producer Matthew Friedman and posted the video on Twitter.

[...]

On June 3, the Texas Tribune reported that Uvalde City Hall locked its doors during regular business hours and refused to “immediately provide any public records to reporters.” According to the Tribune, the move came as residents and journalists aim to hold Pete Arredondo, the chief of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Department, accountable for waiting more than an hour for backup instead of immediately ordering officers to charge the gunman inside Robb Elementary School.

And in an op-ed in the San Antonio Express-News, journalist Michael Drudge cataloged some of the same behavior from public officials:

Adding to the problems journalists face is a virtual news blackout on the part of state and local authorities.

Texas state Sen. Roland Gutierrez represents Uvalde. He’s been a high-profile news source with contacts inside the Texas Department of Public Safety. He revealed Friday that a DPS official told him Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Mitchell Busbee ordered DPS not to release any more information to the senator or the public. The Associated Press reported Friday the DPS referred all questions to Busbee, who did not return phone calls and text messages from the Associated Press.

Unfortunately, the pattern encompasses even more examples over the course of several weeks. In the wake of a horrifying event, when the facts and truth are of critical importance, police and public representatives are interfering with crucial reporting.

Especially given the profound public questions about the actions of the Uvalde police and their role in the shooting, and the department’s constantly shifting stories about what actually took place, it’s essential that journalists are able to find answers. Interference with reporters doing their jobs is never OK for police. But in this case, it is absolutely unacceptable.

CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikipedia user Coolcaesar

A new journalist surveillance scandal coming out of the Department of Justice drives home the need for a strong journalist shield law, but it’s worth taking a look at how the media guidelines work under the status quo. We’ve repeatedly argued that legislation is necessary to resolve questions about when those guidelines apply and to provide accountability in case of violations. So, what kind of accountability is there now?

One only needs to look at the DOJ's own legal filings to see that journalists have little recourse if the department decides to violate its own rules against surveilling reporters. One such example is the ongoing litigation over a warrant and FBI raid of the houses of several members of the right-wing group Project Veritas.

A government raid on a group engaging in journalistic activities — even a controversial group, even one many have accused of serious misrepresentations — requires significant evidence to not constitute a press freedom violation. (We have to speak with conditionals here because the government has thus far refused to unseal its search warrant application and related materials. Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press originally filed for those documents to be unsealed, and ACLU has recently joined those efforts.)

We have been arguing similarly for months: Unless and until the Department of Justice provides evidence that Project Veritas was directly involved in a crime, its raid runs up against the spirit of its own guidelines intended to protect press freedom (and the Privacy Protection Act).

So, what do those guidelines do in practice? As litigation over the warrant and the raid winds through the courts, the DOJ has offered a clear answer — not much. Earlier this month, the DOJ filed a brief citing a series of cases for the “well-settled” proposition that the media guidelines specifically and the Justice Manual more broadly are “not intended to, and [do] not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.” Moreover, the media guidelines in the Justice Manual do not “create any rights, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law by any party in any matter, civil or criminal.”

In other words, if the DOJ decides to break its own guidelines and spy on a journalist, the journalist has no legal right under those guidelines to protest.

We raise these points not to quibble with the DOJ’s interpretation of the relevant regulations, but to underscore the need for real legislation. If the Department of Justice’s policies do not create any enforceable rights to support that position, Congress must do so. And the DOJ can follow through on its promise to support a strong federal shield law by throwing its weight behind Sen. Ron Wyden’s PRESS Act. If they don’t, their promises on press freedom are just empty rhetoric.

The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, where we attempt to document virtually every press freedom violation in the country, has, for some time, made available its database of thousands of incidents for export via the API. We want all the data we’ve collected over the past five years to be available to journalists, advocates, and policy makers for their own analysis.

As an organization committed to helping journalists resist censorship and ensure information remains free, we’ve recently been exploring how we can use the decentralized web, and in particular IPFS, to more permanently store the vast wealth of information now on the Tracker. IPFS, for the uninitiated, is an innovative means to distribute data in a way that doesn’t depend on centralized infrastructure (such as a website).

In some ways similar to torrents, files shared on the IPFS network are mirrored among many nodes. This makes it a protocol particularly resistant to censorship or deletion, and may have other qualities significant to journalists as the internet evolves over time.

To this end, as a proof of concept, we’ve now published the Press Freedom Tracker’s incident database on IFPS. (You can, of course, still use the website API as well). You can view the database at this IPNS ID:

ipns://k51qzi5uqu5dlnwjrnyyd6sl2i729d8qjv1bchfqpmgfeu8jn1w1p4q9x9uqit

You can view the ID via an IPFS web gateway, such as the one provided by Cloudflare, via a browser extension like IPFS Companion, or via another IPFS client. The file is updated about every hour (more on that below), so you can ensure that the dataset you are downloading is the most current.

US Press Freedom Tracker data via IPFS, as viewed in Brave Browser.

A technical deep-dive into IPFS, IPNS, and keeping track of changes to the database

IPFS is an interesting protocol because its content identifiers (CIDs) or ‘hashes’ are cryptographically computed from the content of the file, not its name or other metadata.

This means that every time the file’s content changes, publishing it in IPFS gets a new CID.

There is nothing in the protocol that maintains any sort of ‘revision’ relationship between the old CID and the new one. It is up to the publisher to keep track of old versions of the file (if that’s important to them). Equally, it’s up to the publisher to tell people which CID is the new one, but it would be annoying to have to keep announcing new CIDs every time the file changes.

For this reason, the ID above is an ‘IPNS’ ID, which always points to the latest version of the folder and its contents, without itself ever having to change. IPNS is a little bit like DNS, in that it’s a sort of static ‘alias’ or pointer to another destination - in this case, the latest IPFS CID of the directory.

To maintain a sort of ‘revision’ log of changes to the incidents.csv database (and when it changed), we also publish a changelog file (incidents-log.csv) which shows the previous CIDs and a timestamp of when they were published. The last line in the file is always the latest version of the incidents.csv. You can also fetch the latest file directly (rather than view the directory) by using the IPNS hash, for example:

ipns://k51qzi5uqu5dlnwjrnyyd6sl2i729d8qjv1bchfqpmgfeu8jn1w1p4q9x9uqit/incidents.csv

Feel free to look at older CIDs to see the difference, or to consult the file to find out when the latest version was published.

How often is the data published to IPFS?

We attempt to publish the latest copy of the database to IPFS every hour, but realistically the database itself changes far less frequently. The database is only published (and the changelog updated) if its content changes.

Care to share some code?

We initially tried to use what seems to be the official Python library for working with the IPFS API, but found that it doesn’t seem to support the most recent releases of go-ipfs, and is possibly semi-abandoned.

Fortunately, the go-ipfs service provides its own HTTP RPC API, so we could use Python’s requests module to talk to it.

Publishing a single file to the IPFS API is quite easy, and there are simple examples of how to do it. However, it turns out that publishing a directory containing files was a little more tricky to achieve.

It took a bit of trial and error to work out how to send multiple files in a multipart request with the right tuple values per file, in a way that matched the IPFS API’s documentation, but we got there.

For those curious, here’s a sample of what worked for us. Happy hacking!

If you’re looking to install IPFS on a Linux server, we used an Ansible role for that, which worked great.

With a reporter surveillance scandal of its own embroiling Biden’s Department of Justice, it’s now more important than ever for his administration to throw its weight behind passing a strong journalist shield law, such as Senator Ron Wyden’s PRESS Act.

In the last week, the public learned that the DOJ secretly issued a subpoena seeking phone record information of Guardian journalist Stephanie Kirchgaessner in the course of a leak investigation by the Office of Inspector General, according to a report obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by reporter Jason Leopold. Subsequent reporting has revealed that the subpoena was issued in February of 2021, in the early days of the Biden administration.

Guardian editor-in-chief Katharine Viner described the secret subpoena as “an egregious example of infringement on press freedom and public interest journalism by the US Department of Justice.” We agree — and it’s not an isolated incident.

This revelation follows a series of scandals surrounding the surveillance of journalists in the waning months of the Trump administration, which weren’t disclosed until May 2021 — nearly a year later. In the following weeks and months, the Biden administration and Attorney General Merrick Garland introduced new, stronger guidelines purporting to further restrict the Department’s surveillance powers with regard to journalists. At the same time, the White House and Garland called for legislation to codify these new guidelines — a proposal Freedom of the Press Foundation endorsed.

But as we reported this February, the Department of Justice has taken no action to support any such legislation since, leading Senator Wyden’s office to issue harsh criticism of the administration’s silence.

The difference between DOJ media guidelines and an actual law like the one proposed by Wyden’s PRESS Act is significant, in terms of both clarity and effectiveness. As it stands, the DOJ’s Inspector General could argue that the new media guidelines do not apply to them. Other federal agencies, like DHS, which also recently faced a spying-on-journalists scandal, could claim the policy doesn’t apply to them either. As we explained when the guidelines were adopted, action from Congress is vital for the policy to have any teeth.

The Biden administration has repeatedly sought to distinguish itself from its predecessors in terms of its respect for press freedom; making gains that can be undone at the stroke of a pen is insufficient. Unfortunately, as with the Biden DOJ’s decision to continue pursuing charges against Julian Assange, this new fact pattern reveals a disappointing continuity that challenges the press-friendly image this White House has aimed to cultivate.

The best time for the Biden White House to take meaningful action to support the PRESS Act would have been upon its introduction. Failing that, the next best time is now.

Making electronic documents safer to work with

Freedom of the Press Foundation is now the official home of Dangerzone, an open source tool developed by Micah Lee at First Look Media to make it safer for journalists to work with electronic documents sent to them by sources.

Hackers who target individual journalists or entire newsrooms often try to exploit security bugs in apps used to open common file types like PDFs or Word documents. What looks like a promising news tip may in fact be a carefully orchestrated attack. Dangerzone takes documents in many formats and converts them to safe PDF files.

“It’s almost like printing the document and then scanning it back in again,” said Lee. What remains is the same content displayed on your screen — nothing less and, crucially, nothing more.

Dangerzone takes potentially dangerous PDFs, office documents, or images and converts them to safe PDFs.

Lee, who served on FPF’s board of directors until last year, will continue to be the project’s lead developer. As part of stewarding development of the project, FPF is hiring a part-time developer to make long-awaited improvements, such as batch processing documents. Based on feedback from journalists and other newsroom staff, FPF will make further investments in the project.

With SecureDrop, FPF already manages the development of an open source whistleblower submission platform. Trevor Timm, FPF’s executive director, said the continued development and application of Dangerzone is the next logical step in defending public-interest journalism. “What happens after you receive a document? That’s where Dangerzone comes in. We’re honored to play a role in improving it, to protect journalists and sources alike,” Timm said.

You can download Dangerzone at https://dangerzone.rocks/.

Joe Ravi, CC BY-SA 3.0

In the week since Politico dropped its blockbuster reporting on a draft Supreme Court decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade, the floodgates of leaks have opened. Just today, Politico has reported on more confidential information regarding the status of that opinion, and at least The Washington Post and CNN appear to have anonymous sourcing close to the court.

These leaks, and the reporting they enable, are a good thing. The journalism we’ve seen on this important issue affecting the rights of hundreds of millions of Americans is a critical public service. Nevertheless, in the past week many political commentators have turned their attention to the leak itself and the perceived transgression from long-standing norms that it represents. One outlet memorably called the leak “the gravest, most unforgivable sin.”

These attacks on the leaks are nonsense. We've come to expect criticism of reporters who have unearthed sensitive or embarrassing information that is nonetheless newsworthy; it's no better to go after the source who provided those facts.

Others have argued that point vociferously in the past week. Matt Pearce at the Los Angeles Times has called for more leaks from the Supreme Court, while Jay Willis at the Supreme Court-focused publication Balls and Strikes has gone so far as to provide his Signal information for would-be leakers. At New York Magazine David Klion argues that even without the “who” and the “why” of the leak, we can describe it as a public service and “good, actually,” and at Politico, the outlet that kicked off this firestorm, Jack Shafer defended the leak and condemned the “veil of secrecy” that hangs over the deliberations from the highest court in the land.

In a sense, most of the arguments about the identity of the source behind these “unprecedented” leaks are a sideshow. (And in fact, leaks from the Supreme Court have happened before and already many times since!) This is not a whodunit story, but a significant legal development that could mean the restriction of long-established rights for hundreds of millions of Americans, with dangerous or lethal consequences. Ultimately, the story has informed the public of a consequential government decision of historic importance. That is what journalism is supposed to do.

We don't yet know — and indeed, may never know — the identity of the original leaker, or what motivated their disclosure. But the focus on their identity misses the point. We do know that in subsequent reporting, the pace of new reporting from inside the court has grown. And despite the hand-wringing from conservative commentators, at least some of the anonymous sourcing is coming from the political right.

For example, the Post has spoken with unnamed “conservatives close to the court” — apparently close enough to provide an account of a private conference among the justices. That account echoes earlier discussions on the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page.

There's no ideological purity test for sources, nor should there be. Leakers, whistleblowers, and other sources frequently come with baggage or “impure” motivations for their disclosures. The job of the journalist is to distill the newsworthy information into a reported story.

Whether the leaker in this case was a liberal frustrated with the direction of the court, a conservative aiming to discipline a majority into holding together, or somebody else entirely, the reporters have an opportunity and a duty to report the facts they can provide.

As frequent Supreme Court litigator Theodore Boutrous put it, “Reporters have the right and indeed an obligation to try to get secret information from every branch of the government and the First Amendment protects their efforts to do so.”

The Supreme Court is a tremendously powerful and influential institution, and yet it has largely resisted the same forces toward transparency that have affected large parts of the executive and legislative branches. The people bound by its rulings deserve to know how it works.

CC BY, Flickr user Jametiks

The Los Angeles County sheriff’s public threat of retaliatory investigation into a reporter is an outrageous press freedom violation, and Freedom of the Press Foundation has joined more than two dozen groups last week in a letter condemning that action.

Sheriff Alex Villanueva, in a press conference on April 25, repeatedly pointed to a photo of Los Angeles Times reporter Alene Tchekmedyian and included her among the subjects of a criminal probe. Tchekmedyian reported on a leaked video showing a sheriff’s deputy kneeling on the head of a handcuffed inmate, and an apparent cover-up effort subsequently by Villanueva’s office.

After a public backlash from the Times and media and press freedom groups around the country, Villanueva has backpedaled on the actual investigation. The sheriff described the backlash as an “incredible frenzy of misinformation” in a tweet that included an image from the press conference cropped to remove the screen that displayed the reporter’s face. Still, as we explain in the letter, the very threat constitutes an unacceptable chilling effect:

Even where no charges are ultimately brought, the hostile signal sent by these incidents can have a chilling effect on newsgathering in Los Angeles and thus on the flow of information to the public your office serves. And your rhetoric sharpens, too, the acute physical risks that already face journalists engaged in on-the-ground reporting about law enforcement. See Kirstin McCudden, Another Record Year for Press Freedom Violations in the U.S., U.S. Press Freedom Tracker (Jan 10, 2022), https://perma.cc/HTD8-V759. We urge you to change course and take steps to ensure that reporters’ basic rights are given due respect at every level of the Department—from the deputy on the beat to the office of the Sheriff.

We’ve previously written about the shocking and shameful behavior of Los Angeles police, including the Sheriff’s Department, the Los Angeles Police Department, and several other law enforcement agencies in the area, when it comes to press freedom issues.

Read the full letter, organized by the Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press and signed by FPF and 30 other organizations, below.

Freedom of the Press Foundation is thrilled to announce a new membership program to bring our community together in a world where press freedom is under constant threat. More than just a donation for a T-shirt, our membership program offers an opportunity for journalists, whistleblowers, experts and supporters to connect in new and dynamic ways in support of public-interest journalism.

Members who sign up by Tuesday, May 3 — World Press Freedom Day — will receive an invitation to a members-only event to hear from Daniel Ellsberg, whistleblower, First Amendment advocate, and co-founder of FPF. He’ll discuss leaks both past and present and how we can support the ongoing fight for press freedom. Details of this exclusive event will be shared with members via email after sign-up.

Sign-up today to join Daniel Ellsberg on World Press Freedom Day at 2 p.m. ET!

Members will also gain access to other exclusive FPF events. From remote digital security trainings to tailored seminars led by experts in privacy and technology, FPF has designed a program that encourages members to better arm themselves in the fight for press freedom.

“The membership program is a wonderful opportunity for us all to come together to do more for press freedom,” said Louise Black, FPF’s Vice President of Development and Operations. “I look forward to engaging with our community like never before. It’s thanks to our loyal supporters that we’re able to accomplish all that we do.”

Check out our new membership page to learn more about becoming a member today.

As a thank you for joining the program, members will receive newly designed FPF merchandise so they can wear their commitment to press freedom in style. Membership gifts include exclusive items like:

• Membership Cards
• Webcam privacy stickers
• FPF T-shirts
• FPF Emergency whistles
• FPF Tote bags
• FPF Sweatshirts (crewneck and hoodie options available)

Other FPF shirts, face masks, mugs, stickers and SecureDrop items are also available for direct purchase in our new store.

Your membership will directly support our mission to protect, defend, and empower public interest journalism in the 21st century. On behalf of FPF, we thank you for joining our community and we are excited to blow our whistles with you! Should you ever have questions or concerns, please feel free to contact membership@freedom.press.

FPF is a U.S. 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and our tax ID number is 46-0967274. Your donation is tax-deductible to the full extent provided by law, less the value of any substantial gifts received.

Become a member today!