Laying track / Beet it / Mags tagged

Laying track. The Trump administration’s new website that supposedly tracks media bias while offering up a “hall of shame” is simply a desperate gimmick, posited Margaret Sullivan in The Guardian. 
■ Major news outlets have hammered back at the White House over accusations of journalistic misconduct published in the administration’s new searchable webpage.
■ Citing First Amendment rights, The New York Times has sued the Pentagon over its press-access restrictions, arguing that they are unlawful and unconstitutional.

■ An ICE-tracking app developer has sued Attorney General Pam Bondi, claiming she censored his free speech by pressuring Apple to remove it.

■ The Trump administration is formally cracking down on issuing visas to fact checkers and content moderators.

Balancing act. Incoming New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani will be facing a First Amendment challenge of protecting both free-speech rights of protesters and the religious-freedom rights of the city’s Jewish population.
■ The U.S. Supreme Court could revive a First Amendment suit from a sidewalk preacher who broke a Mississippi city’s protest ordinance by shouting at concertgoers.
■ Court Justices likely will side with abortion opponents in a First Amendment challenge to a New Jersey investigation into whether a faith-based pregnancy center misled people to discourage abortions.
■ The Justice Department has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to block an immigration judge’s free-speech lawsuit that may have consequences for federal workers.

Beet it. In the wake of a lawsuit by the First Amendment Coalition, a California county board of supervisors has agreed not to pursue a subpoena that sought the identities of anonymous critics on Facebook.
■ Concluding that X had violated its digital rulebook concerning misinformation and hate speech, the European Commission fined Elon Musk’s social media app the equivalent of $140 million.
■ In the wake of controversies surrounding the death of Charlie Kirk, it is important to remember that free speech is a constitutional principle, not a conditional privilege, explained professor and sociologist Samuel J. Abrams.
■ Book publishers are challenging Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett’s orders to audit children’s collections and eliminate books that deal with gender identity.

Mags tagged. The University of Alabama has suspended publication of separate student-run magazines for black and female students, saying the two were not compliant with federal DEI guidance.
■ American teens overwhelmingly dislike and distrust news media, according to results of a survey conducted by the News Literacy Project.
■ One-time “CBS Evening News” anchor Connie Chung condemned her former employer in an interview, declaring that greed has caused the network to “crash into crumbles.”
■ House Rep. Jamie Raskin has demanded that CBS News provide more information about how it edited a “60 Minutes” interview with President Trump.
■ Nonprofit news outlets fear that selling ads would jeopardize their tax-exempt status, but IRS records show that is rarely the case.

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Let's be frank / Order up / Worth what?

Let’s be frank. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said President Trump called a reporter “piggy” because of his frankness.
■ Donald Trump’s “piggy” insult is stoking more outrage than usual, wrote Rachel Leingang in analysis published in The Guardian.

■ The Oval Office media access fight between Trump and The Associated Press is being argued in a federal appeals court.

■ The executive editor of The Associated Press explained in an editorial why the news organization is standing up for every American’s right to speak freely.

Order up. A federal judge ruled that a UFO-inspired burger stand mural in Salina, Kan., is protected under the First Amendment.
■ Attempts to hang the Ten Commandments in Texas public schools have created a clash of beliefs among parents, teachers, and students.
■ The U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up a religious-liberty dispute over the broadcasting of a pregame prayer through a stadium loudspeaker at a Christian school in Florida. It left intact the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals finding that the state High School Athletic Association’s use of the speaker constituted government speech and that the school’s rights were not violated.

■ NPR has settled its legal dispute with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for $36 million after it accused the CPB of bowing to pressure from President Trump to cut off its funding.

■ A California climate-related financial reporting law that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce claimed violated companies’ First Amendment rights was paused by a U.S. appeals court.

NYC’s new AOC. Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has quickly become the top target of conservative media, and the attacks are drawing comparisons to Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
■ The MAGA-sphere had trouble processing the Mamdani-Trump White House meeting on podcasts and social media feeds.

■ Federal prosecutors now want to make it illegal to possess anarchist magazines and pamphlets, declared the Freedom of the Press Foundation’s director of advocacy in The Intercept.

■ The undermining of public libraries by Tennessee’s secretary of state is misguided and unnecessary, contended Ken Paulson, director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University.

Worth what? Two months after Charlie Kirk’s assassination a government-backed campaign has led to firings, suspensions, and other actions against more than 600 people who believed they were exercising their First Amendment rights.
■ Florida officials have defended taking action against public employees for comments in the aftermath of Kirk’s killing.
■ Authorities in Tennessee have dropped a felony charge against a man who was jailed for more than a month for a Facebook post.

■ A University of Virginia professor examined in The Conversation how free-speech protections collided with paranoia over communist infiltration during the Red Scare.

Getting chummy. Jeffrey Epstein emails have shed new light on the delicate relationship between reporters and their sources, the Associated Press reported.

■ A Kansas small-town newspaper that was subjected to a controversial raid by law enforcement officers in 2023 has received an apology and a $3 million judgment.

■ Freelance journalists and protesters have sued the Trump administration claiming federal officers’ use of force at a Portland, Ore., rally violated their First Amendment rights.
■ Covering the activities of ICE agents in Los Angeles has meant huge risks for independent reporters, according to the Los Angeles Public Press.

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Fear 101 / Half empty / Hard-pressed

Fear 101. Potentially lawless hardball tactics against California universities by the Trump administration is affecting free speech on campuses, a federal judge has determined.
■ Citing “protected speech” under the First Amendment, a federal jury in Virginia has acquitted a man who used social media posts to call for President Trump’s assassination.
■ A woman who distributed leaflets disclosing the home address of White House official Stephen Miller has found herself investigated by law enforcement agencies and mired in a First Amendment battle.

■ A federal appeals court sided with a parents’ group and ruled that an Ohio school district cannot enforce its gender-pronoun policy.

Force out. An extensive injunction that would restrict federal agents’ use of force against protesters and reporters was issued by a federal judge in Chicago.
■ As federal prosecutors take a hard line against protesters in Los Angeles, nearly 20 percent of their charges have been dismissed or resulted in acquittals, NBC News reported.
■ An Arab-American group has sued the state of California over a new antisemitism law that it says violates free-speech rights.
■ The U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal by a former Kentucky official who sought to overturn the high court’s 2015 same-sex marriage ruling.

Half empty. More than half of the Americans who responded to a new poll said the Trump administration is not committed to protecting constitutional rights and freedoms.
■ The unwanted change to out-of-office emails of Education Department employees blaming Democrats for the government shutdown by Trump administration officials was a violation of their First Amendment rights, a federal judge ruled.
■ After a much-publicized censorship battle, a fired Indiana University student newspaper adviser has filed a lawsuit against the school, claiming the dismissal violated his constitutional rights.
■ A professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has filed a First Amendment lawsuit stemming from her suspension over comments about the death of Charlie Kirk.
■ Citing political pressure around a Charlie Kirk social media post, a dismissed dean has sued Middle Tennessee State University.

Hard-pressed. Conservative activist Laura Loomer, who routinely has been called out for making false claims, announced that she was granted a press credential to work in the Pentagon.
■ A North Carolina GOP spokesperson, citing ties to President Trump, allegedly made attempts to persuade news outlet ProPublica to not publish a story on a prominent state judge, The Washington Post reported.

■ Top officials at the British Broadcasting Corp. have resigned over evidence that a documentary on President Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021, speech in Washington included some misleadingly edited clips.
■ The White House has barred reporters from accessing the West Wing office of Trump administration communications staff.
■ Sen. Ted Cruz blasted “frightened” Republicans for not condemning Tucker Carlson over his podcast interview with white nationalist Nick Fuentes.

No laughing matter. Donald Trump’s list of hosts serving late-night “illegal” comedy continues to grow, as does concern for free-speech defenders, suggested MSNBC’s Steve Benen.
■ The Washington Post has examined newly appointed editor in chief Bari Weiss’ first month of running CBS News.
■ With the online video and posted transcript of the full 73-minute interview with President Trump on “60 Minutes,” viewers caught a rare look inside the news show’s editing process.
■ A consortium of news outlets has made a legal challenge to Tennessee’s restrictions on press access to state executions.

■ An online news service has been launched in Nashville where young journalists will shine a light on current events that are relevant to their peers.

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Closing openness / Press on / Exxcused?

Closing openness. President Donald Trump’s anti-woke AI agenda poses a serious First Amendment threat, Vanderbilt University free-speech advocates warned in an opinion piece for MSNBC.
■ A new study has found that as chatbots surge in popularity, and more Americans use the services to get their news, an alarming amount of their content is false.
■ With “No Kings” marches held nationwide, more than 7 million Americans used their First Amendment rights to defend those same rights, ACLU’s Ellen Flenniken opined.
■ President Trump’s media mockery of the “No Kings” protests only proved the protesters’ point, reported CNN’s Stephen Collinson.
■ Labeling it a violation of the First Amendment, a trio of labor unions has sued the Trump administration over the monitoring of visa holders’ social media posts.

Press on. Former senior White House correspondent Brian Karem wondered if journalists could stop the Trump administration from staging the news and telling reporters how to present it in a recent Salon commentary.
■ Biden-era press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre lashed out at her successor, Karoline Leavitt, over her “inappropriate” exchanges with reporters.
■ Dozens of journalists turned in their access badges and departed the Pentagon rather than agree to new government-imposed restrictions on reporting.
■ Calling it the opposite of freedom of the press, former Fox News reporter and host Bill O’Reilly harshly criticized the Pentagon’s press restrictions.

■ U.S. immigration authorities detained a British journalist on a speaking tour and revoked his visa, Reuters reported.

Open sale-ing. The future of CNN is uncertain as Warner Bros. Discovery has announced it is welcoming bidders that are intent on buying the media conglomerate.
■ PBS and NPR stations are using old and new ways to raise money in the wake of Congress’ $1.1 billion federal funding cut.

■ Students for Life of America has proposed making the late Charlie Kirk’s birthday a national holiday honoring free speech, Fox News reported.
■ Religious freedom is the next First Amendment target of President Trump, declared Rev. Nathan Empsall in a Newsweek commentary.
■ Oklahoma’s new superintendent of public schools has rescinded his predecessor’s mandate to place Bibles in classrooms.

Exxcused? Exxon Mobil has sued the state of California over a pair of climate-related financial disclosure laws the company says violate its First Amendment rights.
■ A federal judge has declared that a Texas law requiring booksellers and publishers to rate their books based on sexual content is unconstitutional.
■ A man has sued Washington, D.C.’s police department and the National Guard after being detained and handcuffed for playing the Darth Vader theme from “Star Wars” while following officers patrolling neighborhoods in the nation’s capital.
■ A federal appeals court has ruled that a Michigan school’s 2022 decision to ban “Let’s Go Brandon” clothing did not violate students' First Amendment rights.

Paper crumbling. An already beleaguered news industry has seen 136 newspapers shut down in the last year, expanding the nation’s news deserts, according to a report from Northwestern University.
■ Defying an administrative order to leave news stories out of a homecoming edition of Indiana University’s student newspaper has cost its faculty adviser his job. But others are pushing back.
■ The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press raised more than $2 million while honoring several leaders in media law and journalism.
■ National Public Radio’s “founding mother” Susan Stamberg, the first female broadcaster to host a national news program, has died at age 87.

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Burn marks / Acting up / Pontificating

Burn marks. President Trump boasted that he “took the freedom of speech away” from those that burn the American flag.
■ Trump’s claim that flag burning is now illegal ignores that it is protected under the First Amendment.

■ The Associated Press has objected to false claims President Trump made about the ongoing legal dispute over proposed press restrictions to White House events.

■ A federal judge fired off a 161-page rebuke of President Trump over his administration’s attempts to bypass the First Amendment and deport pro-Palestinian academics.

The way it is. CBS News, once revered for fact-based reporting, appears to be embracing right-wing journalism, Popular Information has reported.
■ Paramount has bought Bari Weiss’ news and commentary website and named her the new editor-in-chief of CBS News.
■ After widespread pushback from news organizations, the Pentagon announced it had relaxed its press restrictions.
■ By trying to censor the press, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth was orchestrating an attack on the First Amendment.

Acting up. Jane Fonda has resurrected the Committee for the First Amendment, a Hollywood organization that fought suppression and blacklists, reinvigorating the industry’s free-speech crusaders.
■ A Tennessee teacher who was fired over posts about Charlie Kirk has filed a lawsuit to get her job back.
■ Jimmy Kimmel showed media companies that late-night television was not irrelevant, NPR’s Eric Deggans explained.
■ American comics in Saudi Arabia used a global festival to skewer the free-speech debate raging in the United States.
■ Analyzing users’ own data, The Washington Post reported how TikTok keeps folks scrolling for hours every day.

Library bookings? As Arkansas works to save a book-censorship law that would allow jailing librarians and booksellers, the First Amendment prohibits it, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression explained.
■ A Florida district court rejected a First Amendment argument in a school library book-removal lawsuit.

■ A library director in Wyoming fired in books dispute will receive a $700,000 settlement.
■ The Knight Institute, a First Amendment legal organization at Columbia University, has taken on the Trump administration when the university will not.
■ Federal agents need to dial back on aggressive tactics against journalists and protesters in Chicago, a judge has ordered.

Pontificating. Pope Leo defended journalism in a speech where he said that reporting is “a right that must be protected.”
■ Public trust in media has reached a new low, results of a Gallup poll revealed.
■ Assaults on journalists have grown to more than 100 this year, according to data from U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.
■ Belva Davis, the first black woman hired as a TV reporter on the West Coast who overcame hostility and career obstacles, has died at 92.

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Rising up / Down shift / Pledge fight

Rising up. In a much-hyped return to his ABC late-night show, Jimmy Kimmel became an unexpected hero of free speech, declared The Hollywood Reporter.
■ Beyond Kimmel, there is a bigger struggle between free speech and the Federal Communications Commission, concluded Tom Wheeler, a visiting fellow with the Brookings Institution. 

■ President Trump made claims that critical TV coverage of him is “illegal” and not protected by free-speech rights.
■ The push from the FCC and the Trump administration to revoke broadcaster licenses for expressed on-air views they dislike could run afoul of the U.S. Supreme Court.
■ FCC Chair Brendan Carr now has targeted ABC’s “The View,” questioning its qualification as a bona fide news program.

Dismissals challenged. Educators who were fired for social media comments about the assassination of Charlie Kirk have filed First Amendment lawsuits challenging their terminations.

■ Tennessee employers quick to fire employees over social media posts could use more restraint when dealing with First Amendment matters, a Vanderbilt University professor wrote in a recent commentary.

■ Foreign adversaries, including Russia and China, spread disinformation online about America devolving into civil war only hours after the Charlie Kirk shooting, the Associated Press reported.
■ CNN examined the U.S. Supreme Court precedents that the Trump administration’s targeting of “hate speech” would violate.
■ Harvard University’s court victory over President Trump’s threat to cancel billions of dollars in research funding for the school was a win for the First Amendment as well.

Down shift. Remember when Donald Trump and Elon Musk pledged free-speech absolutism? Apparently, they don’t, according to a CNN analysis.
■ Judges have pushed back on Trump administration efforts to test the durability of the First Amendment this year.
■ The FBI agent who was fired for sending anti-Trump texts has lost his First Amendment case to get his job back.

■ A federal judge has overturned parts of a Florida bill banning books, saying it violates students’ First Amendment right of free access to ideas.

Pledge fight. News outlets have geared up to do battle with the Pentagon over reporting restrictions being demanded by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
■ Calling the complaint “tedious and burdensome,” a federal judge dismissed President Trump’s $15 billion defamation lawsuit against The New York Times.
■ The media must stop firing black journalists whose voices are vital to democracy, asserted commenter and podcaster Perry Bacon in a New Republic commentary.
■ The deportation of an Atlanta journalist detained by ICE can proceed, an immigration appeals court ruled.
■ Struggling to pay its bills after federal government funding cuts, NPR reported that it has plans to cut millions from its annual budget.

TikTakeover? Pending federal approval, tech giants, including Oracle, will handle the oversight of TikTok security and algorithms under a new U.S.-China deal.
■ Republican U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie said he had the needed petition signatures to force a House vote on releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files.

■ A new petition law in Florida may jeopardize November ballot measures on Medicaid expansion and recreational marijuana.
■ Tennessee has appealed a 2024 court decision that essentially blocked a state “abortion trafficking” law from taking effect.

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Free fallout / Thought police? / Reshaped

Free fallout. Journalists and teachers have lost their jobs after harshly speaking out publicly or through social media about Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

■ News outlets practiced restraint when it came to showing video of the killing of Charlie Kirk but with nearly instantaneous online images did it make any difference?
■ You can minimize the risk to your employment from social media posts, offered Ken Paulson, director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University, with “10 Ways You Can Use Your Free Speech Without Losing Your Job.”

■ A day before the Utah Valley University shooting a survey of college students revealed that a majority of them oppose having controversial speakers on campus.

■ China and the United States have reached a tentative deal on a sale of TikTok, pending further negotiations.

Thought police? A proposed House bill could give Secretary of State Marco Rubio the power to strip passports from U.S. citizens solely based on what they think or say.
■ First Amendment lawyer Jenin Younes, who once sued former President Joe Biden over censorship, is guilty of making enemies on both left and right, The Washington Post reported.
■ Infowars’ Alex Jones, saying his First Amendment rights were violated in his Sandy Hook libel case, has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to upend the $1.4 billion judgment.
■ Whistleblowers told a U.S. Senate panel that Meta placed virtual-reality profits over the safety of children who used the platform.

Naming rights. The reinstatement of a Confederate general’s name on a Virginia high school violated its students’ First Amendment rights, a federal judge ruled. 
■ Three states are leading the push to legally display the Ten Commandments in public schools while court rulings have blocked those efforts for now.
■ President Donald Trump, in a speech at the Bible Museum, announced that the U.S. Department of Education will issue guidance on prayer in public schools.
■ A classroom argument about teaching gender ideology captured on video has led to the dismissal of a professor at Texas A&M University.
■ For the second year in a row, Columbia University has placed near the bottom of the College Free Speech Rankings reported annually by The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

Reshaped. Paramount’s bid to buy Warner Bros. Discovery would alter the shape of the media industry, effectively putting CNN and CBS News under the same corporate umbrella.
■ A proposed merger of two major television owners in Tennessee could have huge implications for national markets, including station duplication and shrinking newsrooms, argued Mark Harmon, a University of Tennessee-Knoxville journalism professor, in a recent commentary.
■ Meet Kenneth Weinstein, CBS News’ new ombudsman, not the same as the old ombudsman.
■ Following a complaint from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, CBS News will longer edit “Face the Nation” interviews.

Press protection. Citing an “avalanche of evidence” that ICE and Border Patrol agents violated the rights of reporters covering protests, a federal judge has barred officers from using crowd-control weapons against journalists.
■ A family succession fight has ended after media mogul Rupert Murdoch buys out three of his children and dissolves the family trust.
■ Rupert Murdoch’s eldest son, Lachlan, now has the power to decide the fate of News Corp’s newspapers.
■ Written and edited behind bars by Tennessee State Prison inmates in 1981, Nashville’s The Interim instigated change and set the blueprint for prison newspapers of today.

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Burning issue / Plate rattle / Foxfire

Burning issue. President Trump’s executive order on flag burning may fly all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court.
■ An Army veteran was arrested for burning an American flag near the White House, calling his actions a “direct challenge” to Trump’s executive order criminalizing flag burning.
■ Republicans attack symbolic speech because they know it is an effective protest tool, a British-American author asserted in a recent commentary.
■ A California baker in a long-running religious freedom case has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to clarify at what point are her wedding cakes deserving of First Amendment protections.

Plate rattle. A Tennessee woman who had a personalized license plate revoked wants to drive home a point about free speech with the U.S. Supreme Court.
■ U.S. internet forums 4chan and Kiwi Farms have filed a lawsuit against a British media regulator arguing that its new online safety law violates Americans’ right to free speech.
■ Salt Lake City has changed its application process for special-event permits following a fatal shooting at a June “No Kings” protest.
■ Legislators in Michigan want to criminalize the obstruction of traffic as an act of protest.

On account of teens. OpenAI and Meta reportedly are adjusting how their chatbots respond to questions from teenagers who are exhibiting signs of distress.
■ The Walt Disney Co. will pay a $10 million fine to settle a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit that contends Disney allowed data collection on children.
■ Public schools in Conway, Ark., had to remove any display of the Ten Commandments, after a federal judge’s ruling.
■ A Kansas nurse is fighting accusations of practicing without a license after she gave speeches on the subject of dementia while on leave to care for her ailing husband.

Foxfire. Right-wing media network Newsmax has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Fox News over “an exclusionary scheme” that suppresses competition.
■ A right-wing podcaster promoted falsehoods about Washington, D.C., crime and the Trump administration embraced him.
■ The Trump administration’s decision to block $2 billion in federal funding from Harvard University was unconstitutional, a federal judge has ruled.
■ A Boise State professor has examined the landmark Supreme Court ruling Times v Sullivan that makes it hard for public officials to sue the press. President Trump wants it gone.
■ A Texas curfew law that bans certain “expressive activities” on college campuses after dark is being challenged in court by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

Healthy topic. The news media has once again been forced to revisit protocols for reporting on the health of a sitting president.
■ Journalism groups have teamed up to launch a network designed to protect the rights of reporters.
■ The Atlanta Journal-Constitution will cease its print edition at the end of the year, leaving the city as the largest in the country without a printed daily newspaper.
■ Emmy-winning correspondent and host of CNN’s “Newsmaker Saturday,” Charles Bierbauer, has died.  

■ Mark Knoller, a veteran White House correspondent for CBS News, is remembered as hard-working and “prolific” following his death at age 73.

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Unsocial / Dr. Right? / Duck and cover

Unsocial. Meta’s AI rules allowed its chatbots to give false medical information and permit “romantic” conversations with children, Reuters reported.
■ The U.S. Supreme Court has allowed, for now, Mississippi’s social media age-verification law to take effect.
■ The deepfake of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was bad, but the proposed solution is delusional, a Princeton University professor contended in a New York Times opinion piece.

■ Newsmax has agreed to settle its defamation case with Dominion Voting Systems for $67 million.
■ A foreign election-interference law in Maine violates the First Amendment, an appeals court ruled.

Fight fear with FIRE. Stanford University’s student newspaper has filed a lawsuit with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression against the Trump administration claiming that weaponizing immigration law to silence political dissent is unconstitutional.
■ A woman facing charges stemming from a pro-Palestinian demonstration had her case dismissed by a Utah judge.
■ Indiana University has sanctioned an outspoken professor under its new intellectual diversity law.
■ An Alabama law banning DEI initiatives in public schools remains in place after a federal judge refused to block it.

■ As state redistricting proposals generate headlines, constitutional scholar John R. Vile sheds light on how First Amendment rights of association can make a case against partisan gerrymandering.

Dr. Right? Former daytime-TV icon Dr. Phil is seemingly building his own MAGA-friendly news and entertainment network.

■ MSNBC will become MS Now as the network moves away from Comcast’s NBCUniversal TV empire.

■ The Federal Trade Commission’s investigation into Media Matters for America has been temporarily halted by a federal judge who called it a “straightforward First Amendment violation.”
■ University of Tennessee professor Stuart Brotman suggested that the country needs a National News Council now more than ever in an Editor & Publisher commentary.
■ Political leanings of Supreme Court justices are getting greater scrutiny in the press, contend a pair of judicial scholars.

Religious immunization. The former county clerk who was jailed for refusing to issue a same-sex marriage license has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court claiming freedom of religion should have protected her.
■ Supreme Court justices likely will hear a long-running Florida football-prayer case, predicted a University of Dayton law professor.

■ A President Trump-appointed federal judge tossed out an Oklahoma schools chief’s lawsuit apparently designed to silence a religious-freedom organization.
■ The Trump administration cannot restrict access to public information about federal spending, a D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals panel has ruled.
■ A Department of Justice request to unseal grand jury testimony in Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal case was denied by a New York federal judge.

Duck and cover. Navigating a less-cooperative Pentagon under the Trump administration has journalists at Stars and Stripes keeping a low profile while continuing to publish.
■ The police raid on a Kansas newspaper two years ago was a “massive failure,” the reporter who covered the story declared in an interview with the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
■ News Media Corp.’s closures of newspapers across five states leave many communities without a local news source.
■ A Palestinian journalist living in the United States shared his story about his friend and mentor, Anas al-Sharif, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike.

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Cell service / Too late / Feline blue

Cell service. The same president who broadly used the term “fake news” is now answering calls from reporters directly on his personal phone, the Associated Press reported.
■ News icon Dan Rather has called ‘BS’ on the decision by CBS parent company Paramount to appoint a “bias monitor” who would report directly to President Donald Trump.

■ After Meta dismissed its fact-checkers, the crowdsourced replacement to combat falsehoods has been a failure, a tech writer for The Washington Post has deduced.

■ C-SPAN executive and former “Crossfire” producer has unveiled a template for a television program that aims to find common ground in a divisive America.
■ The N-word has been banned at Los Angeles City Council meetings, and the threat of a hefty free-speech lawsuit followed.

‘‘Really scary stuff.’’ Donald Trump’s latest moves against free speech call for defensive maneuvers from news outlets, contended media writer Tom Jones in a Poynter commentary.

■ A federal judge said the Trump administration violated his order mandating that Voice of America news programming be restored.
■ NBC News examined the ripple effect of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s decision to cease operations after the loss of government funding.
■ Some journalists have found ways to survive in a new media world after years of legacy news experience.
■ Tennessee middle-school cheerleaders were arrested after posting a video on TikTok that depicted a school shooting.

Too late. Regardless of whether politics or money killed Stephen Colbert’s show, late-night television just isn’t what it used to be, explained media writer David Bauder.
■ The Arizona Republic’s Bill Goodykoontz called FCC chair Brendan Carr the “second-most dangerous man” in America.

■ FCC’s Carr has been hit with an ethics complaint from the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
■ Felony rioting charges against two Ohio journalists stemming from coverage of a bridge demonstration have been dropped by prosecutors.

Feline blue. A Seattle woman has sued the Blue Angels for blocking her Instagram account after she posted complaints that the “sonic barrage” from flyovers terrified her dying cat.
■ A Tennessee media group has challenged the state’s new law-enforcement “buffer” law.
■ A Pennsylvania man who filmed an officer driving his police cruiser at him on a sidewalk has filed a First Amendment complaint.
■ Glendale, Ariz., residents have sued the city over a panhandling ordinance that they claim violates the First Amendment.

Which craft? The parallels between spreading false information today and during the witch trials from the 1400s are striking and instructive, a Wellesley College professor has found.
■ A Israeli claim without evidence that Hamas was stealing Gaza aid from the U.N. was reported regularly by The New York Times before sources contradicted it, according to an analysis by The Intercept.
■ Jewish students and a Jewish professor reached a $6 million settlement with UCLA over campus protests.
■ A Washington law that required priests to report abuse disclosed during confession was blocked by a federal court as a violation of religious liberty.

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