Friday, June 23, 2023

Committee to Protect Journalists, partners call for charges against New York journalist Stephanie Keith to be dropped

 Via Committee to Protect Journalists

June 21, 2023


District Attorney Alvin Bragg
New York County District Attorney’s Office
One Hogan Place
New York, NY, 10013

Dear District Attorney Bragg,

We, the undersigned press freedom and civil liberties organizations, write to ask that you drop the disorderly conduct charge (Section 240.20, Subsection 6) pending against photojournalist Stephanie Keith, who was documenting a vigil when she was unjustly arrested by New York City police on the evening of May 8, 2023. Her prosecution would set a harmful precedent of prosecuting reporters simply for doing their jobs and documenting matters of public importance.

Leading up to her arrest, Keith was photographing a vigil organized to commemorate the May 1 killing of Jordan Neely, a homeless man who was choked to death on a New York subway train. Keith had been documenting demonstrations around New York in the wake of Neely’s death, with some of her coverage published in Brooklyn Magazine.

Around 8 p.m., Keith was near the northwest corner of East Houston Street and Lafayette Street when NYPD Chief of Patrol John M. Chell can be seen in a video of the arrest grabbing Keith’s arm. Chell can be seen forcefully pushing her into two officers in jackets marked “NYPD Community Affairs,” while yelling “lock her up.” Keith— who was wearing a press badge and was holding a camera— can be heard saying “Please don’t.” The photojournalist was then handcuffed and taken to the 7th Precinct, and then the 9th, where she was issued a court summons.

Later that evening, Chell said during a press conference that Keith “interfered” with three arrests before officers arrested her. However, Keith was simply doing her job and photographing police action and that evening’s vigil. No video has been released showing any alleged interference.

We are gravely concerned by the charges facing Keith. All of the videos of Keith’s arrest show that she was behaving professionally and trying to photograph events, and do not show her interfering with the police. Keith is an award-winning photojournalist whose clients have included Getty Images, Reuters, The New York Times, and Bloomberg. This year, she was part of the New York Times team nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for their breaking news coverage of a fire in the Bronx. Keith was not at the vigil to participate in a protest or interfere with police but to perform the public service of documenting the news, as she’s been doing her entire career.

Our organizations document cases of press freedom violations both in the United States and globally. Our research shows that arresting reporters is a crude form of censorship: it stops journalists from documenting current events, and protracted legal proceedings to dismiss baseless charges create financial and time pressures for reporters. It is disappointing and concerning to see these tactics being deployed in New York City.

Furthermore, the prosecution of reporters in the United States is exceedingly rare, according to the non-partisan U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, which maintains data on press freedom violations across the country. Prosecuting Keith would send a chilling message to journalists in New York City and beyond, and indicate to the wider public that New York City believes that members of the media can be prosecuted simply for doing their jobs.

We understand that your office does not usually take part in summons prosecutions, but we consider this to be an exceptional case. We urge you to dismiss the disorderly conduct charge against Keith and ensure that journalists working in New York City will not face punitive retaliatory measures from the city’s police.

Sincerely,

Committee to Protect Journalists

Freedom of the Press Foundation

New York Publishers Association

Coalition for Women in Journalism

National Press Photographers Association

Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression

Reporters Without Borders

Online News Association

The Deadline Club, NYC Chapter, Society of Professional Journalists

National Coalition Against Censorship

Tuesday, June 20, 2023

Journalists in America must be allowed to safely cover protests

 Via Columbia Journalism Review

June 20, 2023

Journalists in America must be allowed to safely cover protests

(Note: Monroe Gallery presents "Good Trouble", an exhibition of photographs that register the power of individuals to inspire movements and illustrates the power of protest from a deeply human perspective. Through this exhibition, we are reminded of the power of photographs to propel action and inspire change. June 30 - September 17, 2023)


A week after the May 1 strangulation death of Jordan Neely, demonstrators assembled outside the Broadway-Lafayette subway station for a candlelight vigil. Freelance photographer Stephanie Keith was there to cover events, and when police began to arrest protesters, she moved into the street to get the shot. Soon Keith was in handcuffs, being led away by two officers, facing charges of disorderly conduct. 

“I was dumbfounded. I thought it was a mistake,” Keith told me. “I really didn’t understand why this was happening to me.” 

Keith’s arrest might be a relatively minor incident in America’s press freedom landscape if it were not the case that police routinely impede the rights of the press to cover protests and demonstrations.

I spent 2022 as a fellow at the Knight First Amendment Institute researching the issue. I spoke with dozens of journalists across the country, with leading experts on policing, with First Amendment scholars, and with the police themselves (none would speak on the record). I pored over data from the US Press Freedom Tracker, and researched the history of police-press interactions from the civil rights era to the present day. My report “Covering Democracy: Protests, Police, and the Press” is out today. 

The report documents a troubling reality: despite the protection of the First Amendment, the right of journalists to cover protests has not been secure. As the Associated Press’s assistant general counsel Brian Barrett explained, what matters most “is what a police officer decides at two in the morning in a heated environment.”

In most instances journalists and protesters themselves enjoy the same rights, including the right to photograph and otherwise record events, so long as they do not interfere with the activities of the police. But by tradition, journalists covering protests have sought to distinguish themselves in some way—by standing off to the side, but wearing credentials or distinctive clothing, or by verbally identifying themselves to police. In most instances police respected the role of the press and allowed journalists to do their job. But where the institutional relationships have broken down, and particularly when police employ force, journalists have been arrested and attacked in significant numbers. 

The issue came to a head most recently during the summer of 2020, when Americans took to the streets in record numbers following the murder of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis. According to the US Press Freedom Tracker, 129 journalists were arrested or detained while covering the protests during 2020, and hundreds more were attacked or assaulted by police, in some cases resulting in serious injuries. 

One of the most notorious episodes occurred on May 30, 2020, the day after CNN correspondent Omar Jimenez was arrested on live television. That evening, as police in Minneapolis enforced a citywide curfew, they swept through a group of about two dozen journalists who were standing apart from protesters, wearing credentials and carrying professional camera equipment. Police attacked them using less lethal munitions, including pepper spray, and shoved several who tried to escape the onslaught over a six-foot retaining wall. 

Ed Ou, a Canadian war photographer who had moved to the US because he wanted to work in a country where the rights of journalists are respected, was hit in the face with what he believes was a flash-bang grenade; he was seriously injured. Ou later told me that because of the violence and suddenness of the police response in Minneapolis, “my radar for what’s safe has been completely fried.” 

Ou decided to participate in a lawsuit brought by the ACLU against the police and state and local authorities on behalf of journalists who had been attacked and injured. That case, Goyette v. City of Minneapolis, resulted not only in monetary compensation for the plaintiffs but a settlement requiring police to refrain from attacking or arresting journalists. A scathing Justice Department report on the Minneapolis Police Department released Friday noted that “officers regularly retaliate against members of the press—particularly by using force.”

Police in Minneapolis and across the country often claim they can’t possibly distinguish between journalists and protesters when everyone has a cellphone. But the First Amendment requires that they do so, as affirmed in the Goyette settlement and a federal court ruling in another case, Index Newspapers v. City of Portland. In that instance, the court determined that police must ensure that journalists are not subject to violence, arrest, and dispersal and directed officers to identify journalists based on observable behavior, often called a “functional test.”

Police at times have resisted that standard because they allege that protesters falsely claim to be journalists in order to evade arrest. But my research indicates that such behavior, while troubling, is exceedingly rare. Much more common, and thoroughly documented, are instances in which police attack, assault, or arrest journalists who are clearly identifiable and engaging in newsgathering. In one instance Australian correspondent Amelia Brace and her crew were assaulted live on camera by US Park Police while covering a protest outside the White House in June 2020. Brace later testified before Congress that she was shocked by the violence of the attack and that she had expected to work “freely and safely…in the world’s greatest democracy.”

Brace is right. The media has a critical role in ensuring that all First Amendment rights are protected, including the right to assembly and speech. The recent arrest of Stephanie Keith drives home the fact that, as Keith herself put it, “the cops are so arbitrary, and they have so much power over you.” As we enter a polarizing election session in which some of America’s messy politics are likely to play out in the streets, police across the country must ensure that journalists are able to document protests without the risk of attack or arrest. 


Joel Simon is the founding director of the Journalism Protection Initiative at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism.

Monday, June 12, 2023

On-Line Exhibition: 1964 - The Beatles and Their Cameras

 



black and white photograph by Bill Eppridge of Paul McCartny with a camera held to his eye, 1964
by Bill Eppridge

New virtual exhibition now on line.

In 2020, a trove of nearly a thousand photographs taken by Paul McCartney on a 35mm camera was re-discovered in his archive.  A new book has been published: "Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm", available in June 2023, and selected photographs from the book are on exhibit at The National Portrait Gallery in London. through October 1, 2023.

‘Millions of eyes were suddenly upon us, creating a picture I will never forget for the rest of my life.’ --Paul McCartney

Bill Eppridge was at John F. Kennedy airport on February 7, 1964 on assignment for Life magazine to cover The Beatles arrival at JFK airport. He was then invited to continue shooting in their room at the Plaza Hotel and during the days that followed, notably at the Ed Sullivan Show rehearsal and historic performance; in Central Park; on a train ride to Washington, D.C., for the concert at the Washington Coliseum; at the British embassy; and at their renowned performance at Carnegie Hall.

"One morning my boss said, 'Look, we've got a bunch of British musicians coming into town. They're called the Beatles. These were four very fine young gentlemen, and great fun to be around," Eppridge recalled. After he introduced himself to Ringo, who consulted with John, the group asked what he wanted them to do while being photographed for Life. "I'm not going to ask you to do a thing," was Eppridge's reply. "I just want to be here." --Bill Eppridge


View the exhibit here.

Sunday, June 4, 2023

Spencer Museum of Art Adds Prints By Gabriela Campos and Sanjay Suchak To Permanent Collection

 

Spencer Museum of Art text logo


June 5, 2023


The Spencer Museum of Art has acquired photographs by Gallery photographers Gabriela Campos and Sanjay Suchak.

Male Native American dances on top of pedestal where a statue of Spanish Conquistidor Juan de Onate was removed, New Mexico, 2020

Gabriela Campos: Than Tsídéh, 19, of the Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo dances on the empty platform where a statue of Juan de Oñate was removed, Rio Arriba county, New Mexico, June, 2020



Overhead color photograph of Robert E. Lee statue  with grafitti arond base and sidewalk in Richmond, Virginia, 20202

Sanjay Suchak: Robert E. Lee Monument Overhead, Richmond, Virginia, July 2, 2020


With a diverse collection of more than 47,000 art objects and works of cultural significance, the Spencer is the only comprehensive art museum in the state of Kansas and serves more than 100,000 visitors annually. 

The Museum’s vision is to present its collection as a living archive that motivates object-centered research and teaching, creative work, and transformative public dialogue. The Spencer facilitates arts engagement and research through exhibitions, artist commissions and residencies, conferences, film screenings, musical and dramatic performances, artist- and scholar-led lectures, children’s art activities, and community arts and culture festivals.

Friday, June 2, 2023

Tony Vaccaro in 'This Is New York'

 

Via NPR

June 1, 2023

black and white photograph of dancer Gwen Verdon lounging in a hammock on a balcony overlooking the New York skyline in 1953

In a town where private space is at a premium, this 1953 photo from Michael "Tony" Vaccaro 
taken for LOOK magazine shows off a stylish way to get a city view.
Michael "Tony" Vaccaro /Museum of the City of New York


Visiting New York City this summer? A fun, family-friendly exhibit celebrating movies, TV shows, music, books, fashion and art inspired by the city is now open at the Museum of the City of New York.

This Is New York is in celebration of the museum's own centennial. It turns out that the past 100 years have been rich ones for depicting the city.

"1923 is really at the beginning of mass American culture ... Radio, film, it's at the beginning of a whole cultural explosion," said Lilly Tuttle, one of the curators. She said the exhibit is meant to capture New York as artists have experienced it during that time. It's not a love letter.

"It's a crowded, dirty, smelly, rude, cacophonous place. And also glamorous and wonderful and glitzy and fabulous and elegant and cool. And artists across time and across media have captured that," she said. "It's all in here, all at once."

But there's so much to see — in this corner, Jake LaMotta's boxing gloves from Raging Bull! In that corner, a video mocking the meme Pizza Rat! — that it can be overwhelming. Full article here.




color photograph of dancer Gwen Verdon lounging in a hammock on a balcony overlooking the New York skyline in 1953
Gwen Verdon, New York City, NY, 1953



Thursday, June 1, 2023

Harwood Museum of Art Centennial

 Via Harwood Museum of Art


Graphic image with Harwood Museum of Art 100 text on red background


On view at the Harwood from June 2023 to January 2024, the Harwood Museum of Art Centennial exhibition will take visitors on a journey through the museum’s rich history. Touchstones will include the cultural history of the land where the museum now stands, and the many roles the property has served since it was purchased by Burt and Lucy Harwood in 1916. The property was the site for Taos’ first library and art gallery, including a permanent art collection from donors such as Mabel Dodge Luhan. It housed the Works Progress Administration’s (WPA) Taos County Project, the University of New Mexico Summer Field School of Art, and served as a nexus for the Taos Moderns.

The Harwood Museum of Art Centennial exhibition is a survey of the museum through time, the history of the town to which it is so central, and the role that art from Taos and its surroundings played in the larger artistic movements of the last century. Through unique historic and contemporary exhibition vignettes, the Centennial is a dynamic chance for guests to understand the evolution of one of the Southwest’s oldest museums. With a focus on the future, contemporary artists will be showcased through a series of community art installations and a juried artist commission.


Monroe Gallery of Photography is honored to have loaned a print by Margaret Bourke-White for the exhibition.

Native Americans on rock outcropping on the Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico, 1935. Photographed by Margaret Bourke-White for TWA
Margaret Bourke-White/©Life Picture Collection:  Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico, (for TWA), 1935


Thursday, May 11, 2023

Photojournalist arrested at candlelight vigil for man killed on NYC subway

 

Via US Press Freedom Tracker 

color photograph of NYC Policeman escorting handcuffed photojournalist Stephanie Keith following her arrest at a protes on May 8, 2023
Photojournalist Stephanie Keith was arrested on May 8, 2023, while documenting a candlelight vigil for a man who died on a New York City subway train earlier in the month. Keith was charged and released.

 — REUTERS/ANDREW KELLY



Freelance news photographer Stephanie Keith was arrested while documenting a candlelight vigil in New York, New York, on May 8, 2023.

The vigil was organized following the May 1 death of Jordan Neely, a homeless man who was choked to death on a subway train by a Marine Corps veteran. Keith has been documenting demonstrations in the wake of Neely’s death, with some of her coverage published in Brooklyn Magazine.

Keith was one of nearly a dozen people arrested at the May 8 vigil, according to the New York Post, which was held at the Broadway-Lafayette subway station in Manhattan where Neely was killed. In footage posted to Twitter by Oliya Scootercaster, Keith can be heard identifying herself as a press photographer as multiple officers place her in handcuffs and lead her away.

When reached for comment, a New York Police Department spokesperson confirmed that Keith was issued a summons and released, but declined to say which specific charges were filed against her.

The spokesperson directed the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker to footage of a press conference held later that evening. During the press conference, Chief of Patrol John Chell indicated that the majority of those arrested were charged with obstructing government administration and disorderly conduct.

“The reporter interfered in at least two arrests in the middle of the street and we got very physical,” Chell said. “She interfered a third time, so she was placed under arrest.”

Keith, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment, told the Daily News she was detained at the 7th Precinct.

“I was trying to photograph what I thought was an arrest but I never even got a chance to see since they grabbed me as soon as I tried to photograph,” Keith told the News. “I said, ‘I’m press’ and they said, ‘You’re not, you’re arrested.’”

New York Press Photographers Association President Bruce Cotler said in a statement to the News that the organization stands in support of Keith and that he is confident the Manhattan district attorney will drop any charges against her.

Mickey Osterreicher, general counsel for the National Press Photographers Association, told the Tracker that Keith was charged with disorderly conduct.

Friday, May 5, 2023

A league of their own

 Via Pasatiempo

May 5, 2023

By Brian Sanford


screenshot of May 5 article in the Santa Fe New Mexican  :A league of the own"


In one image, an older woman sits on a bus, clutching her purse and looking pensive. In another, a man, his face obscured, gazes searchingly into an armpit-high trash bin. In a third, six children congregate in an empty lot with four-story row housing visible in the distance, their faces registering no signs of discomfort.

To observers in 2023, these septuagenarian images by two Photo League members offer candid views of daily life in a handful of American cities, primarily New York, as the shadow of World War II falls away. The images show little of the suffering that’s common in photographs from the Great Depression 15 years prior or the Vietnam War 15 years later. Yet to U.S. Attorney General Tom C. Clark in 1947, the images of real life were sufficiently objectionable to land the Photo League on a list of groups considered “totalitarian, fascist, communist or subversive.”

The league was a collective of photographers, many of whom were women or first-generation Americans, who thought their work could improve social conditions in the United States. The collective had endured since 1936 but couldn’t survive the power-mad paranoia of McCarthyism, when a mere accusation of harboring communist sympathies was enough to destroy an association, a career, a life, a family. The league’s placement in 1948 on the Attorney General’s List of Subversive Organizations was the beginning of the end — preventing members from selling their work or getting passports — and it shuttered in 1951.

That’s 73 years ago. Remarkably, Sonia Handelman Meyer only recently died in 2022, at age 102, and Ida Wyman in 2019, at age 95. Work by both is featured in Sonia Handelman Meyer and Ida Wyman: Two Pioneering Women Photographers of the Photo League, running through June 18 at the Monroe Gallery of Photography. The exhibit primarily features photographs from 1946 through 1950.



Sonia and Ida embrace at the Norton Museum of Art in Florida during a Photo League exhibit in 2013

Sonia and Ida embrace at the Norton Museum of Art in Florida during a Photo League exhibit in 2013. 
Courtesy Joe Meyer/Monroe Gallery of Photography


At the exhibition’s opening April 21, Wyman’s granddaughter Heather Garrison and Meyer’s son Joe Meyer told a standing-room-only crowd about what inspired their famous photographer family members.

“If you’re wondering what a radical looks like, this old lady here in our backyard, this is what they look like,” Meyer says, pointing to a recent color image of his then-silver-haired mother. “Eventually, they can relax in front of the pond and chill out.”

Meyer then shows an image of his mother from her days in the Photo League, her hair still dark as she playfully balances herself while seated on a bucket, shooting the photographer a side-eyed look.

“This is what a radical looks like back in the day, when they were really active,” he says, proudly adding that his mother was born the year the 19th Amendment was ratified, granting women nationwide the right to vote. That was 1920, eight years after New Mexico became a state.

Meyer says his mother continued working, giving lectures and signing prints, until her death last September.

black and white photograph of young girls on stairway with window behind her, NYC c. 1946
Sonia Handelman Meyer, Girl on stairs, New York City (c. 1946-1950)
courtesy Monroe Gallery of Photography

Sonia Handelman Meyer’s Boy wearing mask features a child tying his shoes while gazing impassively at the camera. In Girl on stairs, a little girl wearing a blouse stands in a stairwell, illuminated by light from the window behind her.

“She loved children,” Meyer says, while showing the audience Children playing in vacant lot, which he calls one of his mother’s most-loved images. ”You know, they’re the hope, and they’re innocent. And these kids, they’re having fun in their vacant lot. There’s no grass, but they’re going to make do, and they’re going to have fun. That touched her, and she captured it.”

Sonia Handelman Meyer had a twin-lens reflex camera, allowing her to look down and see exactly what the images she took would look like once they were developed, rather than having to gaze through a viewfinder and get an approximation. The technological setup allowed her to take photographs without being noticed, her son says, as she didn’t need to raise the camera to eye level.

“She had this like-minded circle of friends; she was kind of left-leaning, as the Photo League was,” he says of his mother’s ideology. “She was anti-war, pro-human rights, pro-women’s rights and equality, you name it.”

She also was afraid — of her government. While the Photo League resisted its demise at first, a member and longtime FBI informant testified in 1949 that the league was a front organization for the Communist Party.

“My parents lived underground in Philadelphia for three years because they were so freaked out, and she was freaked out about the FBI knocking on the door until the day she died,” Meyer says.

Photography funding

Garrison, showing the crowd the only known photo of Wyman’s first camera, says Wyman had to beg her father for the $5 to purchase it. Wyman got an unwanted lesson in overcoming adversity when the camera was stolen at a Woolworth’s store, but she saved enough from babysitting jobs to buy a replacement and joined the camera club in high school.

After graduating at age 17, Wyman had plans to enroll in nursing school but was still a minor.

black and white photograph of feet of a woman and man walking by a clock embedded in the sidewalk in NYC, 1947
Ida Wyman, Sidewalk Clock, New York City (1947); courtesy Monroe Gallery of Photography

“She called up every photo editor in New York City and asked for work, and they all laughed and hung up,” Garrison says. “She also called the [Associated Press] and United Press International and ACME Newspictures, and only ACME asked her to come down, but they offered her a job in the mailroom. The mailroom had vacancies because the men were going to war.” ACME was a U.S.-based news agency that operated from 1923 to 1952.

Wyman was promised the ACME role would lead to photography work, Garrison says, but she instead became a printer — an interest maintained throughout her life.

“She began taking photos of children playing in the neighborhood, beautiful buildings with brick, and she just spent time walking around New York,” Garrison says of Wyman’s early career. “She had a talent for connecting with people. As a child I was embarrassed by this, because at every bus stop in New York, she would just strike up a conversation with a stranger.”

As Wyman gained a reputation and clout, she landed a dream assignment for Life magazine. Life, with its wide pages and widespread circulation, focused on photography from 1936 until it ceased weekly publication in 1972.

While doing work for Life was appealing, the subject matter was not. The assignment involved photographing a group of women in Beverly Hills, California, Garrison says.

“Her [takeaway] was that the men doing work for Life kind of got the real assignments, and the women were left with the fluff,” she says.

Wyman stepped away from photography when she had children, as childcare was not financially feasible. By the time Wyman was ready to re-enter the workforce years later, Garrison says, she no longer received assignments and took a job as a medical photographer.

After a cancer scare, she decided at age 57 to rededicate herself to freelance feature photography, forgoing the pension she would have received had she kept her previous job.

“The staff and friends thought that she was crazy for leaving all this behind and going to an uncertain world,” Garrison says. “But she said nothing focuses the mind more than a near-death experience.”

Wyman continued printing in the second bedroom of her New York City apartment well into her 60s, her daughter says.

“I remember that when visitors were coming, we would move the bins of chemicals out of her bathtub so they wouldn’t see this darkroom in her bathroom,” Garrison says.

Wyman took photographs regularly into her 80s, Garrison says — recently enough that she was able to try her hand at digital and cellphone cameras. While she didn’t care for either, Garrison says, she acknowledged the luxury of not having to transport heavy photography equipment.


black and white photograph of blurred woman in motion at a bus stop in NYC c. 1946
Sonia Handelman Meyer, Bus Stop, New York City (c. 1946-1950)
 courtesy Monroe Gallery of Photography

Gallery owners Michelle and Sid Monroe say 1946 to 1950 was a time of great change in the U.S. in general and in New York City in particular, with an influx of immigrants integrating into an optimistic society.

“We are beginning to describe ourselves as the world’s model of democracy,” Michelle Monroe says of the U.S. at the time. “We saved Europe, we vanquished the Japanese. When you put into context what these photographers’ mission was, that directly contradicted this new description of America. ‘What do you mean, you’re the world’s model for democracy? Look at these children. Look at the conditions that they’re living in.’

“People have been incredulous, asking how these possibly could be deemed threatening. Well, let’s go back to the culture of America post-World War II. They were in direct opposition with the narrative that the McCarthy era was describing. When we explain that to people, they’re like, ‘I got it.’”

Meyer and Wyman met — but not in their Photo League days. An exhibit in New York about a decade ago featured a photograph of them embracing at a museum in Charlotte, North Carolina, says Sid Monroe.

Michelle Monroe adds, “As women, they understood that they couldn’t be pushy, because you know what would happen if you were a pushy woman back then. But they knew how to get things done on the down low, so to speak, and I think that served them well for their entire lives.” ◀


Sonia Handelman Meyer and Ida Wyman: Two Pioneering Women Photographers of the Photo League
10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, through June 18
Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar Ave.
505-992-0800, info@monroegallery.com, monroegallery.com

More reading:

The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936-1951 (Yale University Press, First Edition, 2011), a hardcover coffee table book by Mason Klein and Catherine Evans, features 150 photographs by Photo League members.


Sunday, April 30, 2023

Where the U.S. stands on World Press Freedom Day 2023 (May 3)

 

Via Freedom Forum


Where the U.S. stands on World Press Freedom Day 2023

As the United Nations marks 30 years of World Press Freedom Day on May 3, it’s worth remembering how a mere four words in the First Amendment – “or of the press” – is the basis for press freedom in the United States.

Despite having prime constitutional billing, U.S. news outlets and journalists don’t enjoy the freest press conditions in the world. The U.S. doesn’t even rank in the top 20.

Wait, what?

Reporters Without Borders (known by their French initials, RSF) ranks the U.S. as 42 out of 180 countries. But that is up two spots from the 2021 ranking.

As RSF’s annual report puts it: “In the United States, once considered a model for press freedom and free speech, press freedom violations are increasing at a troubling rate.”

Similarly, global advocacy organization Freedom House gives the U.S. a three out of four on press freedom conditions. Not the worst, but there’s room to improve.

Certainly the U.S. isn’t North Korea, which RSF consistently ranks last.

Nor is it Russia, where the recent arrest of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and ongoing treatment of imprisoned opposition leader, advocate of free expression and 2023 Freedom Forum Free Expression Award honoree Alexey Navalny makes the country’s press freedom ranking of 155 out of 180 countries seem too generous.


U.S. press freedom black holes

WEST VIRGINIA PUBLIC BROADCASTING

West Virginia Public Broadcasting, licensed to the state government, fired reporter Amelia Ferrell Knisely last December. The reporter claimed it was after pressure from state officials who didn’t like her reporting on accusations against a state agency and its treatment of people with disabilities.

NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik covered the fallout, reporting: “Interviews with 20 people with direct knowledge of events at West Virginia Public Broadcasting indicate Knisely's involuntary departure from her position as a part-time reporter was not an aberration but part of a years-long pattern of mounting pressure on the station from Gov. Jim Justice's administration and some state legislators.”

More than 200 local public radio stations, members of the NPR network, are independently owned and operated. Those stations are nonprofits, often licensed to public entities, such as universities, school districts, or in a few cases, state governments.

Whether these stations are licensed to an independent nonprofit or to a public entity, their editorial independence is what makes them essential and reliable news sources. Government funding of any amount does not equal editorial control. When interference happens, it undermines public trust in a free press.

FLORIDA LICENSE PROPOSAL

A bill introduced this year in Florida immediately drew the ire of free press groups – and Gov. Ron DeSantis – for seeking to make “bloggers who write about elected officials to register with the state.”

The bill doesn’t target journalists working at established news outlets, but the spirit runs afoul of the First Amendment.

“53% would support a special licensing process for journalists, like that for doctors and lawyers – perhaps not recognizing press freedom is a right for all and that licensing would limit this freedom,” according to Freedom Forum’s 2022 Where America Stands survey.

Proposals like this aren’t new, particularly in the past 20+ years as publishing and sharing information by people who don’t work for traditional news outlets has become easier. The First Amendment protects more than just “the press,” an amorphous term more than 200 years on. It protects every person’s freedom to talk, write, or share opinions about government or any topic. Attempts to license people, be they journalists, bloggers or your neighbor complaining on Nextdoor will always draw scrutiny as being unconstitutional.

 THREE AFFILIATED TRIBES


Despite the First Amendment’s broad protections for U.S. journalists, those freedoms generally don’t extend to sovereign Native American nations and their tribal-owned media. Federal and state freedom of information laws broadly guarantee anyone can request and receive communications of public officials and other government documents. But these laws don’t cover tribal governments.

For example, the Three Affiliated Tribes of North Dakota have been accused of multiple transparency violations of its own constitution and bylaws, according to the Society of Professional Journalists.

These violations caused the Society of Professional Journalists to give the tribal nation its annual Black Hole Award, which “highlights the most heinous violations of the public’s right to know.”

Journalists who work for tribal-owned media and groups like the Native American Journalists Association and Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance have been pushing tribal governments to extend free press protections and broaden transparency, press access and freedom of information within their sovereign nations.