Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

With Thanksgiving around the corner, the Reporters Committee is thankful for the seven (!) new staff members that recently joined our team. With expertise in media law, policy, and digital platforms, these hires will expand our capacity to protect journalists' First Amendment freedoms as we enter a challenging time for the news media.

Earlier this year, Doug Roberts of?Las?Vegas?Live?contacted the Reporters Committee’s free Legal Hotline?to report that city police had been excluding him and other freelance journalists from its media list and crime scene briefings. Reporters Committee attorneys wrote a letter to the department?arguing that the restrictions “raise serious First Amendment concerns.” RCFP's Jennifer Nelson also called the practices “highly problematic” in a?Las Vegas Review-Journal article: https://lnkd.in/gRjjXb9s Following the letter and the article, Roberts said the police department did “a complete 180,” allowing?Las?Vegas?Live?journalists to attend briefings and adding them to its media email list. “I really appreciate the work that the hotline did,” Roberts said. “Even though we're a small company, probably an unknown company, we still mattered.”

The Reporters Committee is now on Bluesky! If you're active on the platform, give us a follow to keep up with our work and the fight for press freedom: https://lnkd.in/gM8qWa7y

Thanks to Margaret Sullivan for chatting with Reporters Committee Executive Director Bruce D. Brown about the legal challenges ahead for press freedom — and for mentioning RCFP's role in fighting for journalists' newsgathering rights across the US. "[Brown] said, 'We have to prepare and be clear-eyed and get ready to act.' The organization is ready, though, with 20 lawyers on staff, many who worked on these issues during the first Trump administration. 'In 2016, we were a third the size we are now, and we have lawyers with vastly more experience.'" Read the full column in The Guardian US ?

What will a second Trump term mean for FOIA? Experts expect a surge in requests, more court dates — and, as?the Reporters Committee's Adam Marshall notes, more delays. “Most things that I litigate are predicated not on the agency invoking exemptions, but just that the agency has blown past their deadlines,” Marshall told Nieman Journalism Lab. “I can’t say that’s a unique feature of the first Trump administration, but some of the policies of that administration exacerbated that phenomenon.”

A new Justice Department report provides a solid framework to shore up protections for journalists covering protests — including on an issue that has confounded press advocates. Reporters Committee Executive Director Bruce D. Brown and Policy Director Gabe Rottman analyze the evolving legal landscape in Columbia Journalism Review ?

It's uncertain how much Trump's administration will threaten press freedom as part of its effort to enact hard-line immigration policies, particularly around reporting at the border. What we do know is that, during Trump’s first tenure in the White House, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security used its significant investigative and enforcement powers in ways that negatively impacted press freedom. For example, DHS monitored journalists covering the border, attempted to obtain the identity of reporters' confidential sources within the government, and sought to unmask an anonymous social media account criticizing the department’s policies.

Congress is running out of time to pass a federal shield law to protect journalists. The Reporters Committee's Gabe Rottman?spoke to?WIRED?on the importance of the PRESS Act — bipartisan legislation that would provide essential safeguards for the public’s right to know.

"It helps to have a national perspective, and it helps to have local knowledge—you need both." In Columbia Journalism Review, Reporters Committee Chairman Stephen Adler urges national news organizations to build meaningful relationships with local newsrooms to gain clarity on a complex, fragmented America.

Good news: This week, Congress failed to pass legislation that would have granted the executive branch broad powers to terminate the tax-exempt status of nonprofit newsrooms whose terrorism coverage officials dislike. In a letter sent to the House in September, the Reporters Committee and a media coalition argued that the bill posed serious threats to nonprofit newsrooms that provide coverage of terrorism, noting the bill's potential for retaliatory misuse by the government.