a Better Bubble™
Dear Friend of Press Freedom,
It’s now the 66th day that Rümeysa Öztürk is facing deportation by the United States government for writing an op-ed it didn’t like. More press freedom news below.
Federal agencies are transforming into the speech police under President Donald Trump. So why are some Democrats supporting the Kids Online Safety Act, a recently reintroduced bill that would authorize the MAGA-controlled Federal Trade Commission to enforce censorship?
As Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) senior advocacy adviser Caitlin Vogus wrote for The Boston Globe, there’s never an excuse for supporting censorship bills, but especially when the political loyalists at the FTC are sure to abuse any power they’re given to stifle news on disfavored topics. Read the op-ed here.
We’ve written previously about how Trump’s frivolous complaint against Paramount Global over CBS News’ editing of an interview with Kamala Harris threatens the freedoms of other news outlets. Yesterday, Trump proved it by claiming his $20 billion damages demand is based on “mental anguish” due to the answer – which doesn’t even mention him. How’s that for a “snowflake”?
As we informed Paramount Global executives last week, we plan to file a shareholder derivative lawsuit if Paramount settles. We believe any settlement – let alone the eight figure range being discussed – would be an effort to launder bribe money through the courts and would damage Paramount irreparably.
Reports this week in the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere have noted that executives fear derivative liability if they settle. They should. Read more here.
A letter by Sen. Ron Wyden about surveillance of senators’ phone lines has an important lesson for journalists, too: Be careful in selecting your phone carrier.
Wyden wrote his Senate colleagues revealing which wireless carriers inform customers about government surveillance requests (Cape, Google Fi, and US Mobile), and which don’t (AT&T, Boost Mobile, Charter/Spectrum, Comcast/Xfinity Mobile, T-Mobile, and Verizon). Read more here.
As a reporter on the press freedom beat, Liam Scott chronicled abuses against journalists for Voice of America. But now, Scott himself is part of the story.
In March, Trump signed an executive order gutting the United States Agency for Global Media, which oversees VOA. Scott and his colleagues have been or are set to be terminated imminently, and the website hasn’t published a new story in months.
We spoke to Scott about his unique perspective on current threats to press freedom, as both a victim and a journalist covering them. We were joined by Jason Scott of Archive Team, who is working to preserve VOA’s content should it be taken offline. Read more and watch the webinar here.
Lauren Harper, FPF’s Daniel Ellsberg chair on government secrecy, joined MeidasTouch Network’s Legal AF podcast, “Court of History,” to explain how the Trump administration is abusing secrecy to control the news narrative — and how an FPF Freedom of Information Act win revealed the truth.
Harper was joined by University of Maryland professor Jason Baron in a wide-ranging discussion with co-hosts Sidney Blumenthal and Sean Wilentz. Watch the video podcast here.
The same week the Justice Department announced it was dropping federal oversight programs and investigations into more than two dozen police departments, including in Minneapolis, the city held a remembrance marking five years since the murder of George Floyd by a local police officer.
Police abuses of protestors and journalists during the demonstrations that followed Floyd’s murder led to the now-abandoned reforms, including consent decrees in Minneapolis and Louisville dealing with how police should interact with journalists covering protests and their aftermaths. The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a project of FPF, has more. Read the Tracker’s coverage here.
Greene County policy barring staff from speaking to press ‘unconstitutional,’ experts say (The Daily Progress). Local government employees should be able to talk to the press. But in Greene County, Virginia, they can’t. We told The Daily Progress that the county policy is unconstitutional.
Journalist sues LA county, ex-LA county sheriff for criminally investigating her (The Dissenter). It’s good to see journalist Maya Lau stand up for journalists’ right to not be investigated and harassed for doing their jobs.
How to stand your ground, in three (not so easy) steps (American Crisis). Institutions shouldn’t cave to Trump’s threats. Thanks to Margaret Sullivan for citing our plans to sue if Paramount settles with Trump as an example on how to stand your ground.
FBI visits me over manifesto (Ken Klippenstein). Journalists’ sources and newsgathering are none of the FBI’s business. They don’t seriously think Klippenstein was some kind of conspirator — they just want to intimidate him and other journalists.
As a reporter on the press freedom beat, Liam Scott chronicled abuses against journalists at home and abroad for Voice of America. But he was shocked when the experiences of those on the other side of the page became his own.
In March, President Donald Trump signed an executive order suddenly gutting the United States Agency for Global Media, which oversees VOA. Scott and hundreds of colleagues have been or are set to be terminated imminently, and the international news service’s website hasn’t published a new story in months.
To understand more about how Trump’s anti-press tactics threaten the independence of public-interest journalism and what comes next for press freedom in the U.S. and around the world, Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) hosted an online webinar May 23 with Scott and Archive Team Co-founder Jason Scott, who is working to preserve VOA’s content should it be taken offline.
“After several years of covering press freedom issues, it still feels weird to be in the midst of a press freedom issue that is affecting me and my colleagues,” Liam Scott said. “There is actually a lot that is happening here that reminds me of what I’ve reported on in other countries.”
He also expressed significant concern for colleagues who are in the U.S. on visas. Without authorization to continue working here, they will be forced to return home to countries where austere rules about free speech can lead to jail time or worse, he cautioned.
“VOA has journalists now imprisoned in Myanmar, Vietnam, and Azerbaijan, and there are other journalists from Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia who are imprisoned in other countries around the world as well, just for doing their jobs,” Liam Scott said, referring to two other international news services long supported by the U.S. government. “So my immediate concern was if VOA and its sister outlets shut down, who is going to advocate for these reporters?”
Preserving VOA’s online content
While the fate of VOA’s employees hangs in the balance, so too does its website, a resource for readers who live in regions of censorship and can’t access this information anywhere else. Amid fears that the site and the reporting it hosts will vanish from the internet and leave behind thousands of stories, efforts are underway to preserve its contents.
Archive Team members, including Jason Scott, have created an “online footprint” of VOA’s website that contains over 400 gigabytes worth of stories. It’s paramount to ensure a replica of the site exists before its potential takedown, he said, because the work cannot be done retroactively.
“The conversation about whether or not to save something usually stops once it’s gone,” he added.
As a general rule of thumb, Jason Scott recommended that journalists keep multiple copies of their work in different locations, in the event they lose access to where their work is published.
Doing so is especially important in the current digital climate under the Trump administration, which has scrubbed countless federal webpages.
In that sense, said Jason Scott, it bears resemblance to a startup company.
“You move fast, you break things, you work it out later. If something can’t be explained to you in two seconds, get rid of it,” he added. This slash-and-burn approach, a Trump administration hallmark, can wreak havoc for preservation efforts because it evokes a digital “entropy” that can change data access on a dime, said Jason Scott.
While trawling internet data can be exhausting, so can reporting through censorship. Liam Scott, who has continued his work on the press freedom beat at outlets elsewhere, said it’s important “to not get fatigued” and to remember that threats and retaliation are often reactions to strong journalism, which underscores the need to protect the rights of those doing the work.
“Attacks on journalists are also attacks on the public,” he said. “Because when you’re attacking a journalist, you’re attacking the information that they’re trying to share with their audience — information that is so important for how we live our lives.”
Just as accountability is met with reprisal, archiving data is met with unpredictability. As the Archive Team compiles the work of countless VOA journalists who risked their lives to report the truth, Jason Scott said to remember that data preservation is an uphill battle. The power to decide what stays online often belongs to those with the most effective keys to the internet: powerful institutions like the government.
“Data is an incredible devil’s bargain,” he said. “Entropy is the house, and the house always wins.”
stLouIST
