As federal immigration enforcement expands and accountability falters, journalists and citizens share a duty to document this moment.

 Via Poynter

January 16, 2026

Perilous times call for the participation of all --click for full article

“The public should assume responsibility for creating an accurate record of what’s happening. It’s a big job that requires participation from all of civil society, including the local press, religious and community groups, librarians and teachers. Everyone. In every city. This is not an act of protest. It is record-keeping. There will come a time when people will want to know what it was like to be here, now. What was it like to work in a food truck or at a Home Depot when federal agents showed up? What was it like to be randomly stopped or followed on the sidewalk while walking home from a store? What’s it like for Native Americans to be accused by ICE of being undocumented?”

More: This moment will be defined by what we choose to record

Kansas county agrees to pay $3 million over police raid on a small-town newspaper, editor says

 Via Associated Press

November 11, 2025

After the newspaper was raided. Monroe Gallery placed this ad to help support the 

Marion County Record

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A rural Kansas county has agreed to pay a little more than $3 million and apologize over a law enforcement raid on a small-town weekly newspaper in August 2023 that sparked an outcry over press freedom, the paper’s editor said Tuesday.

Marion County was among multiple defendants in five federal lawsuits filed by the company that publishes the Marion County Record, its publisher, the estate of his late mother Joan Meyer, the paper’s co-owner, employees of the paper and a former Marion City Council member whose home also was raided.

Eric Meyer, the paper’s editor and publisher, told The Associated Press he is hoping the size of the payment is large enough to discourage similar actions against news organizations in the future.

“The goal isn’t to get the money. The money is symbolic,” Meyer said. “The press has basically been under assault.”

Sheriff Jeff Soyez issued an apology that mentioned the publisher and his late mother Joan Meyer by name, along with former council member Ruth Herbel and her husband.

“The Sheriff’s Office wishes to express its sincere regrets to Eric and Joan Meyer and Ruth and Ronald Herbel for its participation in the drafting and execution of the Marion County Police Department’s search warrants on their homes and the Marion County Record,” the sheriff’s statement said.

The Marion County Commission approved the agreement Monday after discussing it in private for 15 minutes.

The raid triggered a national debate about press freedom focused on Marion, a town of about 1,900 people set among rolling prairie hills some 150 miles (240 kilometers) southwest of Kansas City, Missouri. Also, Meyer’s mother, who co-owned the newspaper and lived with him, died the day after the raid of a heart attack, which he blamed on the stress of the raid.

A search warrant tied the raid -- which was led by Marion’s police chief -- to a dispute between the newspaper and a local restaurant owner who had accused the Marion County Record of invading her privacy and illegally accessing information about her and her driving record. Meyer has said believed the newspaper’s aggressive coverage of local politics and issues played a role and that his newsroom had been examining the police chief’s past work history.

More articles from the raid

Photojournalist Ed Kashi on his career-spanning exhibition at Monroe Gallery

 Via The Albuquerque Journal

October 19, 2025

Ed Kashi

In a Turkish terrorist court in Diyarbakir, this Kurdish woman was sentenced to 13 years in prison, accused of belonging to the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which seeks to create an independent state in southeastern Turkey, 2006

By Logan Beitman

Even people who don’t know Ed Kashi’s name are often familiar with his photographs. Over the course of his nearly 50-year career, the award-winning photojournalist has created memorable long-form photo-essays for National Geographic, and his work has been published in Time, Newsweek and The New York Times. The World Photography Organisation has called him “one of the leading and most innovative photojournalists of our time.”

Kashi’s current, career-spanning exhibition at Monroe Gallery of Photography in Santa Fe, “Ed Kashi: A Period in Time,” is also the title of his most recent book. The exhibition runs through Nov. 16.

Known for documenting some of the world’s most challenging social and geopolitical issues, Kashi’s subjects have ranged from Protestants in Northern Ireland during the time of the Troubles to oil workers in the Niger Delta to America’s rapidly aging population.

Ed Kashi

A worker subcontracted by Shell Oil Company cleans up an oil spill from a well owned by Shell that had been left abandoned for over 25 years, 2004

“One of the many reasons that I feel so fortunate that I’ve been able to have a long career in this field is that I get to really go deep with issues and subjects that I come to truly care about and that I think that are important,” Kashi said.

One thing that sets Kashi apart from more events-driven news photographers is the length of time he spends with his subjects. He often embeds himself with the groups he’s documenting for months on end, returning year after year for decades-long projects.

“I often say I’m as much of an anthropologist as I am a journalist,” Kashi said. “While many of my projects have a journalistic edge, or they’re topical — like oil in Nigeria or Jewish settlers in the West Bank — I’m not a great news photographer, and frankly, I don’t like working in situations where there’s a lot of other media around. It always feels intrusive to me, and it makes me uncomfortable.

“I much prefer to work where my subjects, or collaborators, as I like to call them, are my own, and I’m able to develop a direct relationship,” he said.

One of Kashi’s longest-running photojournalism projects centered on the Kurdish diaspora. He began photographing the Kurds for National Geographic in 1991 — his first major project for the magazine — and kept returning to the subject for the next three decades.

“It was something I really cared about, and I was given this tremendous support that only National Geographic could give, where I went to eight countries — not only in the Middle East, but in the Kurdish diaspora in Germany and the U.K. — and I was really able to spend time to tell a very deep story about what was the largest ethnic group in the world without a nation of their own,” Kashi said. “The Kurds have the geopolitical misfortune of being in what is now Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria, mainly, so not the friendliest places for a minority group.”

One of Kashi’s most compelling images from that series was taken at a military tribunal in Diyarbakir, Turkey. A fashionably dressed Kurdish woman, accused of being a member of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), stands at a cage-like witness stand, a handful of armed military men behind her.

“I think I got in because I was following a Kurdish human rights lawyer, so I sort of traipsed into the courtroom with him and made a few pictures. And that ended up being a very significant image,” Kashi said. “But after that image appeared in the magazine, they (the Turkish government) confiscated all the copies of (that) 1992 issue of National Geographic within Turkey.”

Despite the attempted censorship, that image, and others from the series, reached a wide international audience. Kashi credits those images with bringing much greater attention to the persecution of the Kurds, a subject that had previously gone underreported.

The Turkish government, meanwhile, grew increasingly restrictive on press freedom. Government repression is an ever-present challenge for photojournalists around the world, Kashi said, and something he has contended with many times.

“For journalists, and particularly for photographers, there is a constant battle of how much can we get away with. How close can we get? What can we access? And when that gets shut down, we have to find other ways to gain access,” he said.

The global landscape for press freedom has gotten significantly worse in recent years, according to Kashi, with widespread and concerted attacks on journalists that he calls “unprecedented.”

“Look at our own Pentagon and the restrictions they’re trying to place on the media,” Kashi said. “It’s a very interesting and tricky moment right now for the media in general, all around the world. There’s been an increase in journalists being arrested, imprisoned and in some cases killed, particularly in Gaza.”

Although Kashi said he has sometimes risked his life for stories, he was never deliberately targeted, the way he said some journalists are currently being targeted and killed in places such as Gaza and Ukraine.

“I’ve not worked in Ukraine, but a colleague of mine, who works a lot with the New York Times as a photographer, was just saying, the scariest thing is when you’re driving down a highway and you hear a drone overhead. It’s not even about (accidentally being hit by) missiles or bombardment from planes or artillery. It’s that a drone can take your car out because they suspect you of being the enemy, or they just want to,” Kashi said. “They know you’re a journalist. They wanted to target you.”

Despite the dangers, photojournalists continue doing their jobs, Kashi said, because they know it can change people’s hearts and minds. Kashi has seen the far-reaching impact his own work has had, and he hopes it will inspire others.

“If you tell good stories, and you tell them in an authentic and sincere way, you can reach people. You can penetrate their consciousness,” Kashi said. “And whether they donate money, or they get involved through their actions, or, at the very least, you might change their mind about something. That’s the reason we must do this work.”

Ed Kashi

A journey, made in 1999, to some of Peru's most outstanding natural and man-made sights. A cloudy view near Machu Picchu.

Federal judge hands press groups wins in lawsuits against LAPD, DHS: "The First Amendment demands better”

Via USA Today

September 15, 2025 

A federal judge handed press and civil liberties groups wins in two separate cases against the Los Angeles Police Department and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem over the treatment of journalists covering immigration raid protests.

U.S. District Judge Hernan D. Vera's preliminary injunctions bar, among other actions, the police department from arresting journalists for failing to disperse or otherwise interfering with journalists' ability to cover Los Angeles protests. The Department of Homeland Security's officers are also barred from "dispersing, threatening or assaulting" journalists who haven't "committed a crime unrelated to failing to obey a dispersal order." --click to read full article

"There's an old line in policing: We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way,” Adam Rose, press rights chair of the Los Angeles Press Club, said in a news release following the rulings. “Press organizations have been trying to help LAPD for years take the easy way, just asking them to train officers and discipline offenders. They wouldn't stop resisting. LAPD failed to police themselves. Now a judge is doing it for them."

Independent photojournalist Nate Gowdy was assaulted and detained by police while documenting a protest against immigration raids in downtown Los Angeles, California, on August 8, 2025.

 Via Press Freedom Tracker

August 13, 2025

Independent photojournalist Nate Gowdy was assaulted and detained by police while documenting a protest against immigration raids in downtown Los Angeles, California, on August 8, 2025.

Protests in LA began in early June in response to federal raids of workplaces and areas in and around the city where immigrant day laborers gather, amid the Trump administration’s larger immigration crackdown. Raids at Home Depots in early August took place seemingly in defiance of a July 11 court order temporarily prohibiting federal agents from using discriminatory profiling.

On Aug. 8, two days after an immigration raid in the parking lot of a Home Depot in LA’s Westlake neighborhood, protesters gathered at the store and marched to the Metropolitan Detention Center downtown. The demonstrators and the journalists covering them encountered a violent response from Los Angeles Police Department officers, violating a court order protecting the press from arrest, assault or other interference.

Gowdy, who was visiting from Seattle, Washington, said he had been photographing the Aug. 8 protest with his partner, fellow journalist Carrie Schreck. The two began documenting the demonstration as protesters started to march. The protest remained peaceful, Gowdy said, until the LAPD arrived.

“They basically lined up and without any provocation, in order to move people, started just swinging their batons indiscriminately,” he told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.

Gowdy watched as one journalist, Nick Stern, waving his press badge to officers, was struck in the face with a police baton. Gowdy himself was thrown to the ground by several officers, scraping his elbow and damaging the metal connectors on the strap holding his spare camera lenses.

“They were so aggressive and wild-eyed and violent,” he said of the LAPD.

After police declared the protest an unlawful assembly, officers pushed demonstrators farther from the detention center. Gowdy and Schreck had stopped photographing and were leaving the area when they were suddenly kettled, or herded by police, along with a handful of journalists and demonstrators, just three blocks from Schreck’s apartment.

Some had press credentials, but Gowdy said officers ignored them.

“They said they didn’t care, and that everyone should have to line up against the wall,” Gowdy recalled.

The journalists’ hands were placed in zip-tie restraints. While some were released, Gowdy and Schreck remained detained for not having physical press badges. Despite carrying camera gear and being vouched for by their colleagues, the officers questioned their legitimacy and denied their requests to speak with a public information officer.

Gowdy offered to show digital credentials and suggested a quick online search to verify his work with major news outlets, but was told he’d be cited for failure to disperse. He and Schreck were taken to a nearby police station and eventually released after more than two hours in custody.

Gowdy said such traumatic encounters can discourage journalists from covering protests.

“In this case, the law was on our side,” he said. “But they didn’t seem to know the law, or they willfully disregarded it in order to intimidate and harass us.”

Gowdy said he doesn’t wear a press badge when he covers protests in Seattle, after it made him a police target. Covering the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, he saw how press credentials can also attract threats from demonstrators. Still, he said this incident convinced him to carry one just in case.

The LAPD did not respond to a Tracker request for comment about the detained journalists. In a statement posted to the social platform X, the department’s Central Division wrote that an unlawful assembly was declared “due to the aggressive nature of a few demonstrators.”

“The protest went into the late night hours with people refusing to disperse,” it continued. “Central Division will continue to support 1st Amendment rights of all people. However, if violence or criminal activity occurs, laws will be enforced.”


The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker catalogues press freedom violations in the United States. Email tips to tips@pressfreedomtracker.us.

“If journalists are not willing to report on the ongoing attacks against the free press, who will?”

 Via Freedom Of The Press Foundation

August 11, 2025

A ‘massive failure’ in Kansas: Two years since the Marion County Record raid

The police raid of the Marion County Record’s newsroom on Aug. 11, 2023, shocked the country but proved to be just one of a series of alarming attacks on local journalism that year. It was also a preview of how lawless and incompetent governments can use strained constructions of the law as pretext to retaliate against journalists they dislike, as we now see not only in small-town America but at the federal level. As the death of Record co-owner Joan Meyer the next day tragically proved, by the time justice takes its course — if it ever does — the damage has often already been done.

We asked investigative journalist Jessica McMaster to reflect on her award-winning coverage of the raid for KSHB-TV in Kansas City, Missouri. The interview is below. You can also read about or watch our discussion with Record publisher Eric Meyer earlier this year. --full article here

Media freedom, civil rights groups to hold press conference about prolonged ICE detention of journalist Mario Guevara

 Via Committee to Protect Journalists 

July 18, 2025

New York, July 18, 2025—Lawyers representing Mario Guevara, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Free Press, and the Georgia First Amendment Foundation will hold a press conference on Tuesday, July 22, 2025, at 10 a.m. to reaffirm calls for the release of the Atlanta-based journalist from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody.

The press conference will highlight the troubling implications Guevera’s case has for First Amendment rights in Georgia and across the nation.

Guevara, an Emmy-winning, Spanish-language journalist, who frequently filmed ICE and law enforcement raids, was originally arrested on First Amendment-related charges while livestreaming a “No Kings” protest in an Atlanta suburb on June 14. He is currently the only journalist in custody in the U.S. whose arrest was in relation to the work of newsgathering.

The journalist, who has lawfully resided in the U.S. for over 20 years, was placed in ICE custody on June 18 where he remains, despite being in the country legally.

Guevara arrived legally in the United States from El Salvador in April 2004. He has remained in the country lawfully since, applying for asylum in 2005 due to the dangers he faced as a journalist in El Salvador. Over the next twenty years, Guevara developed a large following in the Atlanta area, as well as national recognition, for his reporting on immigration issues.

WHAT: Press conference on journalist Mario Guevara’s continued ICE detention

WHEN: Tuesday, July 22, 2025, 10 a.m. EDT. Please arrive ahead of time. ID required.

WHERE: Georgia State Capitol, South Wing, (security entrance on Capitol Square SW)

RSVP: Please register here to attend.

###

Journalists are injured while covering the LA protests

 

June 9, 2025

Law enforcement injure at least 4 journalists covering protests in California amid federal crackdown

Several journalists have been injured while covering the protests in Los Angeles, including a television reporter who was struck when a law enforcement officer fired a nonlethal projectile while she was on the air

British photographer injured by 'plastic bullet' in LA protests

Australian journalist hit by 'rubber bullet' while reporting from LA

Chinese journalist hit by rubber bullet amid the Los Angeles conflict: report

A Statement from Columbia Journalism School Faculty Defending Press Freedom

 Via Columbia Journalism School

March 14, 2025

Freedom of the press – a bedrock principle of American democracy — is under threat in the United States. Here at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism we are witnessing and experiencing an alarming chill. We write to affirm our commitment to supporting and exercising First Amendment rights for students, faculty, and staff on our campus — and, indeed, for all.          (more)

After Homeland Security seized and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a recent graduate of Columbia's School of Public and International Affairs, without charging him with any crime, many of our international students have felt afraid to come to classes and to events on campus. 

They are right to be worried. Some of our faculty members and students who have covered the protests over the Gaza war have been the object of smear campaigns and targeted on the same sites that were used to bring Khalil to the attention of Homeland Security. President Trump has warned that the effort to deport Khalil is just the first of many.

These actions represent threats against political speech and the ability of the American press to do its essential job and are part of a larger design to silence voices that are out of favor with the current administration. We have also seen reports that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is trying to deport the Palestinian poet and journalist Mosab Abu Toha, who has written extensively in the New Yorker about the condition of the residents of Gaza and warned of the mortal danger to Palestinian journalists. 

There are thirteen million legal foreign residents (green card holders) in the United States. If the administration can deport Khalil, it means those 13 million people must live in fear if they dare speak up or publish something that runs afoul of government views. There are more than one million international students in the United States. They, too, may worry that they are no longer free to speak their mind. Punishing even one person for their speech is meant to intimidate others into self-censorship.

One does not have to agree with the political opinions of any particular individual to understand that these threats cut to the core of what it means to live in a pluralistic democracy. The use of deportation to suppress foreign critics runs parallel to an aggressive campaign to use libel laws in novel — even outlandish ways — to silence or intimidate the independent press. The president has sued CBS for an interview with Kamala Harris which Trump found too favorable. He has sued the Pulitzer Prize committee for awarding prizes to stories critical of him. He has even sued the Des Moines Register for publishing the results of a pre-election poll that showed Kamala Harris ahead at that point in the state. Large corporations like Disney and Meta settled lawsuits most lawyers thought they could win because they did not want to risk the wrath of the Trump administration and jeopardize business they have with the federal government. Amazon and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos decided that the paper’s editorial pages would limit themselves to pieces celebrating “free markets and individual liberties.” 

Meanwhile, the Trump administration insists on hand-picking the journalists who will be permitted to cover the White House and Pentagon, and it has banned the Associated Press from press briefings because the AP is following its own style book and refusing to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. 

The Columbia Journalism School stands in defense of First Amendment principles of free speech and free press across the political spectrum. The actions we’ve outlined above jeopardize these principles and therefore the viability of our democracy. All who believe in these freedoms should steadfastly oppose the intimidation, harassment, and detention of individuals on the basis of their speech or their journalism. 

Signed,

The Faculty of Columbia Journalism School

Winona LaDuke: DAPL Pipeline Lawsuit Against Greenpeace Aims to Silence Indigenous Protests, Too

 

Via Democracy Now!

As the oil company Energy Transfer sues Greenpeace over the 2016 Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline, we speak with Indigenous activist Winona LaDuke, who took part in that historic uprising. LaDuke is an enrolled member of the Mississippi Band of Anishinaabe who lives and works on the White Earth Nation Reservation and was among the thousands of people who joined the protests in solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to protect water and Indigenous lands in North Dakota. She highlights the close links between North Dakota’s government and Energy Transfer and says that while the lawsuit targets Greenpeace, Indigenous water and land defenders are also on trial. “North Dakota has really been trying to squash any kind of resistance,” says LaDuke. “If they can try to shut down Greenpeace, they’re going to shut down everybody.”

Media petition North Dakota Supreme Court for expanded access to Greenpeace trial

A Tough Start for Greenpeace in Court Fight With Pipeline Giant

What happens when a city silences a newspaper?

 Via Editor & Publisher

What happens when a city silences a newspaper? An inside look at the Clarksdale censorship case

In a shocking move that has sent ripples through the journalism and legal communities, a Mississippi judge ordered The Clarksdale Press Register to remove an editorial from its website. The piece, which criticized the lack of transparency surrounding a proposed tax initiative, was deemed defamatory by the city’s legal team — leading to an unprecedented ruling that effectively silenced the newspaper. The case raises serious First Amendment concerns, drawing national attention from press freedom advocates who warn of its dangerous implications.

In a recent episode of E&P Reports, E&P Magazine Publisher Mike Blinder sat down with The Clarksdale Press Register owner Wyatt Emmerich and Freedom of the Press Foundation Director of Advocacy Seth Stern to examine the case and its broader impact. They explored what this ruling means for press freedom, the precedent it could set, and why small newspapers must be vigilant in the face of government overreach. --click for full article

UPDATE February 25, 2025: Mississippi city drops lawsuit over newspaper editorial that judge ordered removed

 Mississippi city dropped its lawsuit Monday against a newspaper that had its editorial criticizing local leaders removed by a judge in a case that sparked widespread outrage from First Amendment advocates.

AP reporter and photographer barred from Air Force One over ‘Gulf of Mexico’ terminology dispute

 Via Associated Press

February 14, 2025

The White House barred a credentialed Associated Press reporter and photographer from boarding the presidential airplane Friday for a weekend trip with Donald Trump, saying the news agency’s stance on how to refer to the Gulf of Mexico was to blame for the exclusion. It represented a significant escalation by the White House in a four-day dispute with the AP over access to the presidency.

The administration has blocked the AP from covering a handful of events at the White House this week, including a news conference with India’s leader and several times in the Oval Office. It’s all because the news outlet has not followed Trump’s lead in renaming the body of water, which lies partially outside U.S. territory, to the “Gulf of America.”

AP reporters and photographers travel with the president virtually everywhere as part of a press “pool” and have for decades. AP journalism serves millions of readers and thousands of news outlets around the world.

Journalists consider the administration’s move a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment — a governmental attempt to dictate what a news company publishes under threat of retribution. The Trump administration says the AP has no special right of access to events where space is limited, particularly given the news service’s “commitment to misinformation.”

AP calls that assertion entirely untrue.

“Freedom of speech is a pillar of American democracy and a core value of the American people. The White House has said it supports these principles,” AP spokeswoman Lauren Easton said Friday night. “The actions taken to restrict AP’s coverage of presidential events because of how we refer to a geographic location chip away at this important right enshrined in the U.S. Constitution for all Americans.”

The body of water in question has been called the Gulf of Mexico for hundreds of years. AP, whose influential stylebook is used by news outlets as an arbiter of language and usage, advised that because of its broad set of global customers, it would both refer to the body of water as the Gulf of Mexico and also reference Trump’s order changing the name to the Gulf of America within the United States.

At the same time, the AP switched style last month from Denali to Mount McKinley for the mountain in Alaska that Trump ordered renamed. That location lies entirely within U.S. jurisdiction.

Taylor Budowich, White House deputy chief of staff, said in a post to X Friday — one that was later released as a White House statement — that the AP “continues to ignore the lawful geographic name change of the Gulf of America. This decision is not just divisive, but it also exposes The Associated Press’ commitment to misinformation.”

While the First Amendment protects the AP’s “right to irresponsible and dishonest reporting,” it doesn’t ensure unfettered access to limited spaces like the Oval Office and Air Force One, Budowich said. He said AP would retain its credentials to the White House complex overall.

On Friday, an AP reporter and photographer had traveled to Joint Base Andrews for their participation in the traveling press pool to Trump’s Florida residence. But, after clearing security, neither was allowed to board Air Force One, a decision they were told was “outlet-specific.” Meanwhile, reporters in the press pool who were permitted on the plane sent the AP journalists pictures of cards with their names saying “welcome aboard” on their empty seats.

Other news organizations, like The New York Times and Washington Post, have also said they would primarily use Gulf of Mexico. Fox News said that it was switching to Gulf of America.

The White House Correspondents Association has issued statements condemning the action against AP. Although there are talks going on behind the scenes, individual news outlets have been relatively quiet.

The Times, through spokesman Charles Stadtlander, said on Friday that “we stand by The Associated Press in condemning repeated acts of retribution by this administration for editorial decisions it disagrees with. Any move to limit access or impede reporters doing their jobs is at odds with the press freedoms enshrined in the Constitution.”

In a statement, the Washington Post said that the AP’s “access to the administration is central for all journalistic organizations, including The Washington Post, in serving millions of Americans with fact-based, independent journalism each day.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who on Wednesday used the word “lies” in describing AP content, posted on X Friday afternoon about executive orders Trump had signed before his departure. She ended her post: “The @AP was not invited.”

Update February 15, 2025

As watchdogs, journalists deserve protection

 The Santa Fe New Mexican

February 11, 2025

A bill designed to offer greater protection to journalists — however they do their reporting — will get its first hearing Tuesday in the House Consumer and Public Affairs Committee.

Sponsored by Rep. Sarah Silva, D-Las Cruces, House Bill 153, or the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying Act, proposes an update to New Mexico’s current shield law to cover the many ways reporters operate today. House Speaker Javier Martínez and Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth are co-sponsoring the legislation.

A shield law is designed to protect journalists’ sources and communications, important in a world where powerful forces seek to intimidate reporters and stop them from doing their jobs.

The role of journalism — which has been part of The Santa Fe New Mexican’s 175-year legacy — is to be the public’s watchdog, to pay attention to accountability stories on behalf of the public. Shield laws effectively are in the public’s behalf.

Importantly, the legislation expands the definition of what a journalist is, taking into account how reporting takes place today.

A journalist might be a reporter for an established newspaper, a TV or radio station, a podcaster, an online news site, or an independent citizen covering the local school board in small-town New Mexico. These journalists deserve protection, a sentiment approved by the New Mexico Press Association, which voted to support this legislation Monday.

The communications of journalists also deserve to be kept confidential, so Silva’s bill would shield emails, for example, from state snooping. It is a comprehensive piece of legislation, put together after much research and consultation with experts.

Silva’s bill is similar to federal legislation that died in Congress in 2024, the federal PRESS Act. That law was modeled after regulations put in place by the U.S. Department of Justice under former President Joe Biden. Then-President-elect Donald Trump, however, told congressional Republicans to stop the federal PRESS Act. That leaves it to states to offer protections to reporters.

According to attorney Charles K. Purcell, New Mexico has had a law concerning a reporter’s privilege on the books, with an updated statute adopted in 1973. Purcell is an expert on the shield law in New Mexico and worked with Silva on drafting this legislation.

The New Mexico Supreme Court held the current law unconstitutional to the extent it regulated procedures in state court with its own rule of evidence. The current shield law and Silva’s legislation only will apply to proceedings in the legislative and executive branches.

Should there be an impeachment hearing in the House of Representatives, for example, a reporter’s notes naming a source could not become fodder in the proceedings. Similarly, attempts by agencies under the governor’s purview would be stymied if they targeted whistleblowers.

Despite ruling that the shield law does not apply to court proceedings, the New Mexico Supreme Court does have its own press shield rule, adopted in 1982. Journalists’ sources are protected in local and state courts — and Silva is in conversations with the Supreme Court to update that rule.

In a national atmosphere where journalists remain under attack by everyone from the president on down, ensuring reporters can work without fear of reprisal is important.

As Silva pointed out when she announced her legislation: “We see examples at the federal level of government chipping away at journalists’ ability to do their jobs by pursuing the identities of unnamed sources and deterring whistleblowing.

The integrity of unnamed sources is critical to journalists fulfilling their role as watchdogs in our society. I want to ensure New Mexico safeguards the integrity of journalism.”

The line between activism and journalism breaks

 Via Neiman Labs

By Hafsa Maqsood

December 10, 2025

“When journalists around the world are being killed for practicing their freedom of press, journalists have no choice but to become activists.”

There is a growing frustration in the pit of the global journalism industry’s stomach. A frustration that comes from witnessing an entire year of devastating war in the Middle East, massive bloodshed, and ongoing conflicts across the globe where nothing seems to be working. A sickening frustration fed by the reeking hypocrisy of trying to “holding truth to power” in a post-truth world simultaneously bowing to power.

This frustration was born long ago in the stomachs of marginalized members of various diasporas, like myself, coming from histories of ancestral displacement and ravaging colonialism, and it is in part what has motivated them to join media and journalism industries only to be met with walls of supposed objectivity. An “impartiality” that leads to donning a hollow mask of white neutrality discordant with their lived realities.

That frustration will come to a breaking point in 2025 and translate into tearing down the line between activism and journalism that has already been breached, particularly since the 2020 rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.

When democracies are in peril, when international laws meant to hold humanity accountable are being disregarded, when people charged with criminal offenses are leading governments, when journalists around the world are being killed for practicing their freedom of press, journalists have no choice but to become activists.

In 2025, journalists will no longer be told that coming in to work with a “Free Palestine” sticker on their laptops or water bottles is controversial and against guidelines while a “Stand With Ukraine” sticker is praised. Massive refugee and humanitarian displacements that occurred in 2024 will also impact news audiences. As journalists respond to audience demands, this shift will encourage a journalistic focus on human interest and global perspective stories that amplify refugee and diaspora narratives. Diaspora communities will play a crucial role in shaping these narratives through activism and storytelling that will bloom in the 2025 media and journalism industry.

When giving a lecture on media framing at the University of British Columbia in 2022, I held a roundtable attended by many members of Palestinian diaspora in Canada. Every one of them expressed turning away from legacy media in favor of citizen journalism and treating activists as sources for news. What if journalists with training and established platforms could tap into these audiences who are rejecting them in favor of unofficial news sources? What does this rejection mean for the decline of legacy media and journalistic ethics of “truth-telling?”

The answers to these questions, I predict, will come to fruition in 2025. We, as an industry, will have to reevaluate the meaning of “journalistic independence” if we want that sickening pit of frustration to heal. And the demands of a growing diaspora born out of conflict, war, and displacement will be one exceedingly difficult to ignore.

Hafsa Maqsood is a journalist and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Calgary.

Publisher of raided Kansas newspaper delivers advice to journalists: ‘Make democracy great again’

 Via Kansas Reflector

November 18, 2024

TOPEKA — The editor of the Kansas newspaper raided by police last year has a message for journalists struggling with their sense of purpose.

Go on the offensive.

Eric Meyer, editor and publisher of the Marion County Record, delivered remarks Friday as he was inducted alongside his mother, Joan, into the Kansas Press Association Newspaper Hall of Fame.

“I think this is a time when we have to establish for the people of this country the fact that we are important, that we have things that we can tell them that they will want to know, that they will want to change their positions about,” Meyer said.

He added, in a nod to the results of the presidential election: “Let’s not make America great again. Let’s make democracy great again.”

Police raided the Marion County Record newsroom and the home where Meyer lived with his mother in August 2023 under the false pretense that journalists had committed a crime by looking up a public record. Joan Meyer, the 98-year-old co-owner whose profane clash with police officers was captured on camera, died a day after the raid from stress-induced cardiac arrest. The raid spawned five civil lawsuits and a criminal charge against the police chief who led the attack on a free press.

Meyer said he is “an odd duck” because he retired to run a newspaper, rather than retire from it. He returned to Kansas during the COVID-19 pandemic to take over the publication his parents had operated for decades. After teaching journalism for 20 years at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Meyer wanted to practice what he had been preaching — that journalism is still vital.

“We’re not talking about the future of journalists. We’re talking about the future of democracy,” Meyer said. “Because without journalism, there is no democracy. We can’t have an informed public making informed decisions that will lead our country if they don’t have information, solid information that’s reliable. Getting their attention, though, is a very serious problem.”

Before the raid on his newspaper, Meyer said, circulation was already up, “because we were trying to do the best news stories we could.” After the raid, thousands of people from across the country purchased subscriptions in a show of support. Many of them, he said, are actually reading the stories. Some of the out-of-state readers have become so invested in the news out of Marion that they are even writing letters to the editor.

His advice to other journalists: “Forget all the gimmicks.”

“Don’t worry about what you put on social media,” Meyer said. “Don’t worry about the video you’re shooting. Don’t worry about the blogs you’re writing. Don’t worry about the marketing techniques. Do good journalism, period. Good journalism. That means finding stories that affect people and giving them an opportunity to do something about it.”

Joan Meyer edited the newspaper for 50 years and continued writing until she died. Her last column ran in the same issue as her obituary.

Her death intensified national interest in a story about the abuse of power in trying to silence a free press.

“Although I’m sure she didn’t want to go out the way she did, worrying about the Hitler tactics and so on, it is kind of rare, at age 98, that your death means something to someone, that you go out and you’re you’re sort of a martyr to your cause,” her son said.






Other hall of fame inductees were Ann Brill, dean of the University of Kansas journalism school; Sally Buzbee, a former executive editor of the Washington Post and Associated Press; small-town publishers Cynthia Desilet Haynes and Ben Marshall; retired Wichita Eagle and Kansas City Star reporter Roy Wenzl; and photojournalists Barbara Kinney, David Peterson, George Olson, Joel Sartore and W. Eugene Smith.

Journalists must be allowed to do their jobs safely in Lancaster County and across the US [editorial]

 Via Lancaster Online

October 27, 2024

Lancaster Safety Coalition footage shows a Lancaster city police officer pushing a photojournalist to the ground during protests Sunday, Oct. 20, in Penn Square, near the Lancaster County Convention Center, where Donald Trump was speaking.

Lancaster Safety Coalition

THE ISSUE

“A Lancaster city police officer pushed a photojournalist to the ground (last) Sunday afternoon, causing her to hit her head on the street during a protest of former President Donald Trump’s town hall event at Lancaster County Convention Center,” LNP | LancasterOnline reported. Susan Stava, a New York City-based freelance photographer, was working to capture the scene in Lancaster city’s Penn Square, where local Democrats were protesting Trump’s visit. Video shows a Lancaster city police officer firmly pushing Stava, causing her to fall backward onto the road. Stava said she landed on her camera bag, and a lens was broken.

It took the Lancaster City Bureau of Police all of three days to “investigate” the incident in which a freelance photojournalist was pushed to the ground by a city police officer. Its conclusion: The officer “followed the law including the Bureau’s training, policies, and procedures.”

--Click for full editorial

"Journalists see journalism not merely as a job, but as a calling that’s critical to the health of a democracy. Elected officials should not actively undermine their safety — or stay silent about an incident in which a journalist faced harm."

For journalists, NYPD protest changes can’t come too soon

 Via Columbia Journalism Review

September 20, 2024

"For the sake of democracy and the protection of First Amendment rights, that day can’t come soon enough. In New York and across the nation, police departments should immediately ban kettling, which threatens the First Amendment rights of all protesters and specifically undermines the work of the press. As the Justice Department has noted, police departments should ensure that provisions are in place to allow journalists to continue to work, documenting events including police activity, when a lawful dispersal order is given or a curfew put in place." --click for full article

Pennsylvania man, brother charged with assaulting New York Times photographer on January 6

 

Via ABC20 WHTM

September 13, 2024




Two brothers were arrested Thursday on charges that they assaulted a New York Times photographer inside the U.S. Capitol during a mob’s attack on the building more than three years ago.

David Walker, 49, of Delran, New Jersey, and Philip Walker, 52, of Upper Chichester, Pennsylvania, also are charged with stealing a camera from the photographer during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.

Philip Walker told investigators that he tossed a camera into a body of water on his way home from Washington, D.C., according to an FBI agent’s affidavit.

Court records don’t name the photographer or identify her employer, but New York Times spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha confirmed that the affidavit refers to staff photographer Erin Schaff, who wrote about her experience at the Capitol.

“We are grateful to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and the FBI for their persistence in pursuing justice in this case,” Rhodes Ha said in a statement. “Independent, fact-based journalism is a cornerstone of democracy and attacks against reporters should be a grave concern to anyone who cares about an informed citizenry.”

Philip Walker told the FBI that he believed the photographer was a member of “antifa,” a term for anti-fascist activists who often clash with far-right extremists at political protests.

A livestream video posted on social media showed the photographer standing at the top of the East Rotunda Stairs just before the Walkers assaulted her and then ran down the staircase.

Schaff recalled that two or three men in black surrounded her, demanded to know her employer and became angry when they grabbed her press pass and saw that she worked for The New York Times.

“They threw me to the floor, trying to take my cameras,” she wrote. “I started screaming for help as loudly as I could. No one came. People just watched. At this point, I thought I could be killed and no one would stop them.”

Schaff said police found her but didn’t believe that she was a journalist because her press pass was stolen.

“They drew their guns, pointed them and yelled at me to get down on my hands and knees,” she wrote. “As I lay on the ground, two other photojournalists came into the hall and started shouting ‘She’s a journalist!’”

Philip Walker was carrying what appeared to be Schaff’s photographic equipment as he fled, the FBI said. David Walker pushed the photographer again when she tried to pursue his brother and retrieve her equipment, according to the affidavit.

A magistrate judge ordered David Walker to be released on $50,000 bail after his initial court appearance in New Jersey on Thursday, court records show. An attorney who represented Walker at the hearing didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

The Walkers were arrested on complaints charging them with robbery, assault and other charges.

Other rioters were charged with assaulting an Associated Press photographer outside the Capitol during the riot. One of them, Alan Byerly, was sentenced in October 2022 to nearly three years in prison.

Nearly 1,500 people have been charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes. Approximately 140 police officers were injured in the attack.

Former police chief who launched a raid on a Kansas newspaper office and two homes is expected to be charged with obstruction of judicial process

 

Via KHSM 41

August 5, 2024

By: Jessica McMaster

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The former police chief who launched a raid on a Kansas newspaper office and two homes is expected to be charged with obstruction of judicial process, according to two special prosecutors who released their findings on the case Monday.

While the evidence that trickled out over the past year indicated no crimes were committed by any of the people accused by Cody, this is the first public acknowledgment by outside investigators that no crimes occurred, except for the one Cody is now accused of committing. --Click for link to article

LINK | Complete KSHB 41 News coverage of Marion newspaper raid

The New York Times:

Mr. Meyer said in an interview on Monday that he was still suing the police, the sheriff and others in connection with his mother’s death and the raid on the newspaper office. He said he was thankful that Mr. Cody would be charged, but said the prosecutors’ report “glossed over a lot of wrongdoing.”

$235,000 Settlement Is Reached in Police Raid of a Kansas Newspaper

 Via The New York Times

July 6, 2024

A former reporter of The Marion County Record has settled a lawsuit following a raid on the weekly newspaper last year that garnered widespread attention.

--"Ms. Gruver, who left the newspaper last fall, said in a letter to the editor that she “no longer wanted to work in a town where the majority of ‘leaders’ clearly don’t respect the Fourth Estate or the U.S. Constitution,” The Record reported."

More:

    ACCOUNTABILITY IS PAST DUE FOR KANSAS NEWSROOM RAID

   IN MARION COUNTY NEWSPAPER RAID, A GRIM THREAT TO KANSANS’ FIRST       AMENDMENT RIGHTS