a Better Bubble™
Dear Friend of Press Freedom,
Rümeysa Öztürk has been facing deportation for 227 days for co-writing an op-ed the government didn’t like, and the government hasn’t stopped targeting journalists for deportation. Read on for news from Illinois, our latest public records lawsuit, and how you can take action to protect journalism.
A federal judge in Chicago yesterday entered an order to stop federal immigration officers from targeting journalists and peaceful protesters, affirming journalists’ right to cover protests and their aftermath without being assaulted or arrested.
Judge Sara Ellis entered her ruling — which extended a similar prior order against Immigration and Customs Enforcement — in dramatic fashion, quoting everyone from Chicago journalist and poet Carl Sandburg to the Founding Fathers. But the real question is whether she’ll enforce the order when the feds violate it, as they surely will. After all, they violated the prior order repeatedly and egregiously.
Federal judges can fine and jail people who violate their orders. But they rarely use those powers, especially against the government. That needs to change when state thugs are tearing up the First Amendment on Chicago’s streets. We suspect Sandburg would agree.
Journalist Raven Geary of Unraveled Press summed it up at a press conference after the hearing: “If people think a reporter can’t be this opinionated, let them think that. I know what’s right and what’s wrong. I don’t feel an ounce of shame saying that this is wrong.”
Congratulations to Geary and the rest of the journalists and press organizations in Chicago and Los Angeles that are standing against those wrongs by taking the government to court and winning. Listen to Geary’s remarks here.
We partnered with Defending Rights & Dissent to platform three U.S. journalists who were abducted from humanitarian flotillas bound for Gaza and detained by Israel.
They discussed the inaction from their own government in the aftermath of their abduction, shared their experiences while detained, and reflected on what drove them to take this risk while so many reporters are self-censoring.
We’ll have a write-up of the event soon, but it deserves to be seen in full. Watch it here.
We filed yet another Freedom of Information Act lawsuit this week — this time to uncover records on ICE’s efforts to curtail congressional access to immigration facilities.
“ICE loves to demand our papers but it seems they don’t like it as much when we demand theirs,” attorney Ginger Quintero-McCall of Free Information Group said.
If you are a FOIA lawyer who is interested in working with us pro bono or for a reduced fee on FOIA litigation, please email lauren@freedom.press.
Read more about our latest lawsuit here.
Last week, Sen. Ted Cruz convened yet another congressional hearing on Biden-era “jawboning” of Big Tech companies. The message: Government officials leaning on these multibillion-dollar conglomerates to influence the views they platform was akin to censorship.
Sure, the Biden administration’s conduct is worth scrutinizing and learning from. But if you accept the premise that gigantic tech companies are susceptible to soft pressure from a censorial government, doesn’t it go without saying that so are individual journalists who lack anything close to those resources?
We wrote about the numerous instances of “jawboning” of individual reporters during the current administration that Senate Republicans failed to address at their hearing. Read more here.
Conservatives are outraged at Tucker Carlson for throwing softballs to neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes. But the Trump administration is continuing its predecessor’s prosecution of journalist Tim Burke for exposing Tucker Carlson whitewashing another antisemite — Ye, formerly known as Kanye West.
Lawmakers shouldn’t stand for this hypocrisy, regardless of political party. Tell them to speak up with our action center.
What We're Reading FBI investigating recent incident involving feds in Evanston, tries to block city from releasing records Evanston RoundTableApparently obstructing transparency at the federal level is no longer enough and the government now wants to meddle with municipal police departments’ responses to public records requests.
To preserve records, Homeland Security now relies on officials to take screenshots The New York TimesThe new policy “drastically increases the likelihood the agency isn’t complying with the Federal Records Act,” FPF’s Lauren Harper told the Times.
When your local reporter needs the same protection as a war correspondent PoynterForeign war correspondents get “hostile environment training, security consultants, trauma counselors and legal teams. … Local newsrooms covering militarized federal operations in their own communities? Sometimes all we have is Google, group chats and each other.”
YouTube quietly erased more than 700 videos documenting Israeli human rights violations The Intercept“It is outrageous that YouTube is furthering the Trump administration’s agenda to remove evidence of human rights violations and war crimes from public view,” said Katherine Gallagher of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
Plea to televise Charlie Kirk trial renews Senate talk of cameras in courtrooms Courthouse News ServiceIt’s past time for cameras in courtrooms nationwide. None of the studies have ever substantiated whatever harms critics have claimed transparency would cause. Hopefully, the Kirk trial will make this a bipartisan issue.
When storytelling is called ‘terrorism’: How my friend and fellow journalist was targeted by ICE The Barbed Wire“The government is attempting to lay a foundation for dissenting political beliefs as grounds for terrorism. And people like Ya’akub — non-white [or] non-Christian — have been made its primary examples. Both journalists; like Mario Guevara … and civilians.”
Last week, Sen. Ted Cruz convened yet another congressional hearing on Biden-era “jawboning” of Big Tech companies. The message: Government officials leaning on these multibillion-dollar conglomerates to influence the views they platform was akin to censorship. Officials may not have formally ordered the companies to self-censor, but they didn’t have to – businesspeople know it’s in their economic interests to stay on the administration’s good side.
They’re not entirely wrong. Public officials are entitled to express their opinions about private speech, but it’s a different story when they lead speakers to believe they have no choice but to appease the government. At the same time the Biden administration was making asks of social platforms, the former president and other Democrats (and Republicans) pushed for repealing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the law that allows social media to exist.
It’s unlikely that the Biden administration intended its rhetoric around Section 230 to intimidate social media platforms into censorship. That said, it’s certainly possible companies made content decisions they otherwise wouldn’t have when requested by a government looking to legislate them out of existence. It’s something worth exploring and learning from.
But if you accept the premise — as I do — that gigantic tech companies with billions in the bank and armies of lawyers are susceptible to soft pressure from a censorial government, doesn’t it go without saying that so are individual journalists who lack anything close to those resources?
If it’s jawboning when Biden officials suggest Facebook take down anti-vaccine posts, isn’t it “jawboning” when a North Carolina GOP official tells ProPublica to kill a story, touting connections to the Trump administration? When the president calls for reporters to be fired for doing basic journalism, like reporting on leaks? When the White House and Pentagon condition access on helping them further official narratives? A good-faith conversation about jawboning can’t just ignore all of that.
Here are some more incidents Cruz and his colleagues have not held hearings about:
Sources wanting to expose wrongdoing ... will think twice about talking to journalists who are known targets of an out-of-control administration.
There are plenty more examples — and that doesn’t even get into all the targeting of news outlets, from major broadcast networks to community radio stations. They may have more resources than individual reporters, but they’re nowhere near as well positioned to withstand a major spike in legal bills and insurance premiums as big social media firms (who this administration also jawbones to censor constitutionally protected content).
And hovering over all of this is President Donald Trump himself, whose social media feed doubles as an intimidation campaign against reporters. Our Trump Anti-Press Social Media Tracker documents hundreds of posts targeting not only news outlets but individual journalists. It’s documented over 3,500 posts. Unlike Biden-era “jawboning,” threats like these come from the very top — people in a position to actually carry them out. And unlike Biden’s administration, Trump’s track record makes the threat of government retribution real, not hypothetical.
Trump views excessive criticism of him as “probably illegal.” He has made very clear his desire for journalists to be imprisoned, sued for billions, and assaulted for reasons completely untethered to the Constitution, and has surrounded himself with bootlicking stooges eager to carry out his whims. “Chilling” is an understatement for the effect when a sitting president — particularly an authoritarian one — threatens journalists for doing their job.
It’s not only that these journalists don’t have the resources of Meta, Alphabet, and the like. They also have much more to lose. Tech companies might get some bad PR based on how they handle government takedown requests, but it’s unlikely to significantly impact their bottom line, particularly when news content comprises a small fraction of their business.
But journalists don’t just host news content, they create it. Their whole careers depend on their reputations and the willingness of sources to trust them. Sources wanting to expose wrongdoing, who often talk to journalists at great personal risk and try to keep a low profile, will think twice about talking to journalists who are known targets of an out-of-control administration.
Other news outlets might be reluctant to hire someone who has been singled out by the world’s most powerful person and his lackeys. Editors and publishers — already spooked about publishing articles that might draw a SLAPP suit or worse from Trump — will be doubly hesitant when the article is written by someone already on the administration’s public blacklist.
Unlike Biden’s antics, the Trump administration has cut out the middleman by directly targeting the speech and speakers it doesn’t like. And it wields this power against people with a fraction of the resources to fight back. If that’s not jawboning, what is?
stLouIST