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The BBC has announced a new Kurt Cobain documentary.The film, titled Moments That Shook Music: Kurt Cobain, will air on BBC Two in honor of the upcoming 30th anniversary of the…

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“St. Louis has had a longstanding fashion, headwear and sneaker culture that we wanted to tap into,” said Lids President Bob Durda.

Back in 2021, the Chicago Office of the Inspector General released a report on the PD’s ShotSpotter tech. The acoustic detection system was apparently mostly useless, no matter what ShotSpotter may have commented in response. Residents of Chicago are paying nearly $11 million a year for this system. But it’s obvious they’re not getting much […]

New faces in the St. Louis Cardinals’ starting rotation won’t be the only changes fans see this year at Busch Stadium. There’s also a new all-inclusive club, a “slinger” hot dog and an arcade for kids.

The Festus man broke the pole-and-line carp fishing record, the third Missouri fishing record broken in 2024.

Missouri cannabis regulators have revoked nine of the 48 social-equity cannabis licenses issued in October, after finding the companies that obtained them didn’t meet eligibility requirements.  Eight were dispensaries linked to out-of-state groups and one was a wholesale facility. Among them is Canna Zoned, a Michigan company that secured two of the 16 dispensary cannabis […]

The post Missouri revokes nine social-equity cannabis business licenses for out-of-state companies appeared first on Missouri Independent.

A St. Louis County SWAT team used a battering ram to burst into a home in Ferguson. Officers had used the Find My app to trace a pair of stolen AirPods linked to a carjacking to that address. The only problem? The AirPods had been tossed into the street. The family inside had nothing to do with the carjacking and never had the AirPods. This month’s Legal Roundtable convenes to discuss the raid. Attorneys Eric Banks, Dave Roland and Nicole Gorovsky also discuss a white professor suing St. Louis’ historically Black university for racial discrimination, whether the Republican Party has a legal basis to stop an “honorary” Ku Klux Klan member from running as a GOP candidate for governor, and more.

The program was established to help people who might not otherwise be able to enter the cannabis industry.

The St. Louis Blues suffer a big blow to their fading playoff hopes. Oskar Sundqvist, a steady fourth-line forward, will miss the rest of the 2023-24 season with a torn ACL.

Have you ever wondered what it would look like for Mick Jagger to show off his dance moves to a song about his dance moves? Well, wonder no more.The Rolling…

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Former U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who nearly won the vice presidency on the Democratic ticket with Al Gore in the disputed 2000 election and who almost became Republican John McCain's running mate eight years later, has died, according to a statement issued by his family.

Asheville Blade journalists Veronica Coit and Matilda Bliss are appealing their convictions for trespassing. They had refused to leave a North Carolina park where they were covering the news.

Photo courtesy of Veronica Coit/Asheville Blade.

A new appeal in North Carolina could set the state’s legal standard for when police can bar journalists from public places where they’re covering the news.

Journalists Veronica Coit and Matilda Bliss of The Asheville Blade were convicted of trespassing after a five-day trial in June 2023. Police arrested them while they were reporting on and recording a protest and police sweep at a homeless encampment in a public park in Asheville, North Carolina, on Christmas Eve of 2021. Authorities moved forward with the prosecution even as press freedom groups around the country condemned it.

Coit and Bliss are now appealing to the North Carolina Court of Appeals on First Amendment grounds. They argue that the trespassing law was unconstitutional as applied to them, and that the court incorrectly suggested to jurors they couldn't consider the First Amendment when deliberating.

Coit and Bliss are far from the first journalists arrested while covering a protest. But their conviction is unusual, since, in most cases, authorities come to their senses and drop charges against journalists before they go to trial. The decision to drop charges is often the result of public pressure. But there’s also a growing recognition of the First Amendment right of the press to cover protests happening in public places.

For example, after protests over the police killing of George Floyd rocked the country in 2020, a federal appeals court in California upheld an order based on the First Amendment that forbade federal officials from arresting journalists for not dispersing from protests in Oregon after being ordered to do so. As the court explained: “Public demonstrations and protests are clearly protected by the First Amendment, and a protest not open to the press and general public is not a public demonstration.”

Even the Department of Justice — which has aggressively pursued journalists in other cases — has recognized that the press has a right to be present to cover protests. Following the protests in Minneapolis over Floyd’s killing — and the harsh crackdown by police on both protesters and the press — the DOJ specifically recognized that blanket enforcement of dispersal orders and curfews against the press violates First Amendment principles. It faulted Minneapolis police who interfered with newsgathering “by unlawfully limiting journalists’ access to public spaces where protests take place, and thus their ability to report on police.”

That’s exactly what happened to Coit and Bliss. By restricting their access to the park, the authorities prevented the journalists from providing oversight and accountability of the police sweep of the encampment.

It was also totally unnecessary to demand that the Blade journalists leave, and the order left them with no alternative for covering the protest or the police response. There’s no evidence that their presence interfered with the police action in any way. And while officers insisted that the journalists could report from the bottom of a steep hill roughly 150 feet away, that would have left them unable to see or hear what was happening, let alone record officers, especially since it was dark outside.

In other words, as Coit and Bliss put it in their appellate brief, “When journalists cover protests, they must be in the same place as the protesters to gather the news.” Unfortunately, that commonsense point has so far been lost on police, prosecutors, and the North Carolina courts.

Or maybe they understand it all too well. After all, police could be heard remarking on bodycam footage that Coit and Bliss should be arrested first “because they’re videotaping.” By arresting the journalists, police put a stop to their reporting. By prosecuting them, authorities chill other journalists who would do the same.

The Court of Appeals, however, now has a chance to get it right and uphold the First Amendment. Its decision in this case will impact not only Coit and Bliss but all journalists in the state who cover protests, police, or other activities on public land. And, most importantly, it will impact the public, who rely on the press to go where the story is and report the news people need to know.

The court can, and must, find that the First Amendment gives journalists the right to cover police activity in public places. Police may wait until nightfall to break up a protest. But that’s no reason the public should be left in the dark.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg outlined Wednesday the immediate and longer-term priorities the Biden administration is pursuing in the aftermath of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore that left six presumed dead. While many questions remained roughly 36 hours after a massive cargo ship struck the bridge and caused the deadly collapse, Buttigieg at […]

The post Federal rebuild of Baltimore bridge ‘will not be quick or easy or cheap,’ Buttigieg says appeared first on Missouri Independent.

The elected leaders of St. Louis City and St. Charles County had a heated exchange Wednesday over a new regional crime reduction plan.

Embattled St. Louis developer Green Street faces a string of new claims, including one by a former employee who says the firm gave investors misleading financial information.