By Jenna Wims Hashway Public agencies and officials run afoul of First Amendment protections if they block Twitter followers for criticizing them. But those First Amendment arguments are moot if those government officials simply hit “mute.” That’s the upshot of a recent ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald, who said that President […]
By Edward Fitzpatrick Glamorous work it’s not. The work that she has done for decades has placed her at odds with some of the state’s most powerful public officials. The work has placed her on hard wooden benches in State House hearing rooms, waiting for hours to deliver testimony to leery legislators. And the work […]
By David A. Logan The malicious spreading of rumors, masquerading as fact, well predates the Internet, but the ubiquity and speed of electronic communications, and the tendency of social media to provide amplification, has made the problem exponentially more dangerous to the “marketplace of ideas.” Perhaps there is no better example of that cancer on […]
By Justin Silverman In an effort to counter the anti-media rhetoric being expressed by President Trump, The Boston Globe called on newspapers throughout the country to publish editorials today emphasizing the value of journalism and a free press. According to the Globe: A central pillar of President Trump’s politics is a sustained assault on the […]
By June Speakman On Aug. 5, Brian Stelter, anchor of CNN’s Reliable Sources, shared with viewers an audiotape of a call to a CSPAN political show in which the caller said that if he ran into Stelter and CNN correspondent Don Lemon, he would “shoot” them. Earlier in the week, MSNBC’s Katy Tur read an […]
Have a public records story you would like to share? Email justin@nefac.org with your experience trying to obtain information through a state public records law. By David Kassel The Massachusetts supervisor of public records ruled in April that the state’s Disabled Persons Protection Commission (DPPC) can keep all investigative reports on the sudden death of […]
By Edward Fitzpatrick Perhaps it comes as no surprise that prosecutors in President Donald Trump’s Justice Department secretly seized years’ worth of a New York Times reporters’ phone and email records as part of a leak investigation. But no one appreciates the danger of such a step more than James Risen, the former New York […]
By Michael J. Yelnosky On June 27, the U.S. Supreme Court announced its 5-4 decision in Janus v. AFSCME. The majority held that the First Amendment prohibited the enforcement of ubiquitous provisions in collective bargaining agreements between public sector labor unions and government employers requiring all employees represented by the union to pay their share […]
By Justin Silverman A gunman harboring a grudge against the Capital Gazette, a community newspaper outside Annapolis, Md., opened fire in its newsroom last week killing five staff members and injuring several others. Those killed include the editorial page editor, an editor and features columnist, a longtime sports reporter and editor and a local news […]
By Edward Fitzpatrick It is our Watergate. The 38 Studios debacle might not have produced a constitutional crisis or a legal battle (over the Nixon White House tapes) that went all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States. But Curt Schilling’s ill-fated video-game venture certainly produced a monumental crisis here in Rhode […]