December 15, 2025
They all also centered around a single issue: immigration. --click to read full report
Showing posts with label press freedom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label press freedom. Show all posts
Monday, December 15, 2025
Tuesday, November 11, 2025
Kansas county agrees to pay $3 million over police raid on a small-town newspaper, editor says
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.
Friday, November 7, 2025
When your local reporter needs the same protection as a war correspondent
November 6, 2025
When federal immigration operations began sweeping across Los Angeles in June, our newsroom worked around the clock. I didn’t have to tell them to. No one wanted to stop.
One reporter’s family members were being followed. Another staffer’s family went into hiding — despite having legal status. Sources we’d cultivated for years suddenly wouldn’t answer calls. At LA Public Press, a 14-person nonprofit newsroom led by and largely staffed by people of color who grew up in the neighborhoods we cover, everyone on staff was personally touched by the raids in some way. We weren’t covering some abstract story happening to other people. We were covering home.
By July, I had to force people to take weekends off. Soon after, every other Friday became mandatory time away. The story hasn’t stopped, but boundaries are harder to draw when you’re covering what’s happening to your own family.
It took us weeks to realize we were facing the same dangers as foreign correspondents in conflict zones — the threat of violence, retaliation and the exhaustion of sustained trauma coverage. But we didn’t have their security teams, legal protections or institutional support. --click for full article
Tuesday, November 4, 2025
In solidarity with of Fall Of Freedom, Monroe Gallery presents a Pop Up exhibit in the Gallery and Online November 18 - 22
Via Fall of Freedom
An upside-down American flag hangs from El Capitan near Yosemite National Park’s Horsetail Falls to protest the thousands of federal job cuts made by President Donald Trump’s administration, February 22, 2025
Fall of Freedom is an urgent call to the arts community to unite in defiance of authoritarian forces sweeping the nation. Our Democracy is under attack. Threats to free expression are rising. Dissent is being criminalized. Institutions and media have been recast as mouthpieces of propaganda.
In solidarity with of Fall Of Freedom, Monroe Gallery presents a Pop Up exhibit in the Gallery and Online November 18 - 22 of photographs documenting people struggling for their freedom; their right to live without fear, their right to speak and the right to protest inequities.
Nina Berman
Monday, September 15, 2025
Federal judge hands press groups wins in lawsuits against LAPD, DHS: "The First Amendment demands better”
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."
Wednesday, 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.
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.
Monday, August 11, 2025
“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
Friday, July 18, 2025
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.
###
Saturday, July 12, 2025
Federal Judge Tells LAPD to Stop Shooting at Journalists
July 11, 2025
A federal judge just had to remind police that they shouldn’t shoot at journalists after several violent encounters during the protests opposing the Trump administration’s disastrous ICE raids in Los Angeles.
U.S. District Judge Hernán D. Vera blocked the Los Angeles Police Department from wrongfully preventing journalists from accessing closed off areas, detaining or arresting journalists while they’re reporting, and using less lethal munitions (LLMs) and other crowd control weapons against them.In a 14 page-filing, Vera said that the First Amendment claims made by the Los Angeles Press Club were likely to succeed, and granted them a temporary restraining order. “Indeed, given the fundamental nature of the speech interests involved and the almost daily protests throughout Southern California drawing media coverage, the identified harm is undoubtedly imminent and concrete,” he wrote in a filing.
Vera recounted multiple instances of journalists being cordoned away from the protests or detained and arrested by officers. Documentarian and activist Anthony Orendoff was detained for four days despite telling officers he was a member of the press.
Vera also recounted many instances of violence against members of the press. In one instance, an officer appeared to aim his gun at 9News Australia’s Lauren Tomasi while she was reporting live, and fired a rubber bullet which hit her in the leg on air. Photojournalist Michael Nigro, who stood high above the protests in a press vest and helmet, heard the sound of LLMs hitting a pole by his head, and later that day was struck in the helmet by a rubber bullet. Another unidentified photojournalist with a press pass was pushed over by a police officer, and trampled by a police horse.
Vera barred officers from “prohibiting a journalist from entering or remaining in the closed areas.” The judge also prohibited officers from “intentionally assaulting, interfering with, or obstructing any journalist” who is “gathering, “receiving, or processing information for communication to the public.”
He also barred officers from “citing, detaining, or arresting a journalist who is in a closed area for failure to disperse, curfew violation, or obstruction of a law enforcement officer for gathering, receiving, or processing information,” or using LLMs, like rubber bullets, and other crowd control measures like flash-bangs and chemical irritants like tear gas.
A hearing for a preliminary injunction was set for July 24.
Tuesday, July 8, 2025
Reporting under fire: Protests and press freedom in Los Angeles, a virtual webinar event with Freedom of the Press Foundation
Via Freedom Of The Press Foundation
Wednesday, July 9, 3 p.m. EDT/12 p.m. PDT
Journalists covering recent demonstrations in California have been assaulted, detained, shot with crowd-control munitions, and had their equipment searched — simply for doing their jobs.
Freelance and independent reporters are especially vulnerable, yet they continue to document how immigration raids impact communities and how law enforcement responds to civil unrest. Some of the journalists joining us are also plaintiffs in lawsuits pushing back against police actions that threaten press freedom and violate the First Amendment.
Join us to hear their firsthand accounts and learn what it means to uphold the public’s right to know in the streets and on the front lines.
If you cannot attend, help protect the rights of these journalists and defend press freedom everywhere by making a donation to support our work at this link.
On July 9th, we’ll be joined by:
- Adam Rose, Press rights chair and secretary at LA Press Club
- Ben Camacho, Journalist and co-founder of The Southlander
- Sean Beckner-Carmitchel, Independent videographer
- Tina-Desiree Berg, Journalist for Status Coup and other outlets
- Caitlin Vogus, Freedom of the Press Foundation senior adviser
Monday, June 9, 2025
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
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
Friday, March 14, 2025
A Statement from Columbia Journalism School Faculty Defending Press Freedom
Via Columbia Journalism School
March 14, 2025
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
Friday, February 21, 2025
“The press and all people in the United States have the right to choose their own words and not be retaliated against by the government”
February 21, 2025
The Associated Press sued three Trump administration officials Friday over access to presidential events, citing freedom of speech in asking a federal judge to stop the 10-day blocking of its journalists.
The lawsuit was filed Friday afternoon in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.
The AP says its case is about an unconstitutional effort by the White House to control speech — in this case refusing to change its style from the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America,” as President Donald Trump did last month with an executive order.
“The press and all people in the United States have the right to choose their own words and not be retaliated against by the government,” the AP said in its lawsuit, which names White House Chief of Staff Susan Wiles, Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
“This targeted attack on the AP’s editorial independence and ability to gather and report the news strikes at the very core of the First Amendment,” the news agency said. “This court should remedy it immediately.”
In stopping the AP from attending press events at the White House and Mar-a-Lago, or flying on Air Force One in the agency’s customary spot, the Trump team directly cited the AP’s decision not to fully follow the president’s renaming.
“We’re going to keep them out until such time as they agree that it’s the Gulf of America,” Trump said Tuesday.
This week, about 40 news organizations signed onto a letter organized by the White House Correspondents Association, urging the White House to reverse its policy against the AP.
Saturday, February 15, 2025
AP reporter and photographer barred from Air Force One over ‘Gulf of Mexico’ terminology dispute
February 14, 2025
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
Tuesday, February 11, 2025
As watchdogs, journalists deserve protection
February 11, 2025
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 MartÃnez 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.”
Tuesday, December 10, 2024
The line between activism and journalism breaks
By Hafsa Maqsood
December 10, 2025
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.
Thursday, December 5, 2024
Not in Kansas anymore: Alabama press violations echo earlier attack
Via Freedom Of The Press Foundation
December 5, 2024
“Where are all the good people who are supposed to stop this from happening?”
Marion County Record co-owner Joan Meyer asked that question repeatedly before her death — a day after local police illegally and unconstitutionally raided her community newspaper and home in response to the Record’s reporting about a local restaurant owner’s drunk driving convictions.
Alabama reporter Don Fletcher and newspaper publisher Sherry Digmon might have asked themselves that same question.
Last year, the two were arrested on sham charges for allegedly revealing grand jury secrets. Digmon, who also served on the local school board, was charged with violating an Alabama ethics law as well. It’s yet another unfortunate effort to make journalism a crime and silence reporters.
The bogus criminal investigation came after Atmore News, the local newspaper co-owned by Digmon, published Fletcher’s article about a school board meeting and a subpoena seeking school board financial records from the previous year. The subpoena was issued by Escambia County District Attorney Stephen Billy.
Four months after the arrests, Billy admitted to personal and professional conflicts of interest in the cases, and removed himself as prosecutor. The state attorney general’s office dropped the charges soon after.
Now, Digmon and Fletcher, joined by a school board member and a district employee also caught up in the investigation, have filed a federal lawsuit against Billy, Sheriff Heath Jackson, and “allies” for conspiring to violate their First and Fourth amendment rights.
On the surface, the attack on Atmore News — like that on the Marion County Record — may appear limited to a few law enforcement officials abusing their power. But in both cases, a little digging reveals politically motivated multiparty schemes.
The similarities between officials’ arrest of Fletcher and Digmon and the raid on the Record are startling and informative. After the Marion raid, the response and backlash seemed to make a repeat unlikely soon. But just months later, the Atmore News found itself at the center of a similar attack on press freedom.
Friday, November 22, 2024
Publisher of raided Kansas newspaper delivers advice to journalists: ‘Make democracy great again’
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.
Wednesday, November 6, 2024
Monday, October 7, 2024
At protests, police are increasingly arresting members of the press—especially those with cameras.
Via Columbia Journalism Review
October 7, 2024
Since the violence of last October 7—as the conflict between Israel and Palestine has grown deadlier, and spread more widely in the Middle East—it has also been, according to the US Press Freedom Tracker, a nonpartisan database of press freedom violations, a “protest year.” The visual journalists who cover demonstrations across America—photographers, videographers—are at the center of the action. “We have to get creative, go on the floor, shoot through cops’ legs, just to get that visual,” Madison Swart—a photojournalist in New York whose work has been published in Out and Cosmopolitan, among other places—told me. In May, while covering a pro-Palestinian protest, Swart was briefly detained by police officers—one of forty-three journalists who have been arrested in the past year, triple the previous number. According to Stephanie Sugars, a reporter for the US Press Freedom Tracker, “it has felt that the predominant number of incidents, at least since the protests started, are against people who are documenting visually in some capacity.”
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
