‘Believe anonymous sources.’ Poynter’s Tom Jones dissects controversy over The Atlantic’s reporting that President Trump has disparaged Americans who died in war.■ Free Speech Center director Ken Paulson on a new report from the Knight Foundation and Gallup: “Are America’s news media more biased than ever before, or are we simply looking in the mirror?” (Image: Bybzee from the Noun Project.)
‘Attacks on the people’s press.’ Journalism prof Jeff Jarvis says Donald Trump’s war on TikTok in the U.S. and Rupert Murdoch’s legislative assault on Facebook in Australia undermine freedom of expression.
■ He condemns traditional journalists who haven’t spoken in opposition: “The old press still thinks the meaning of the press is a machine that spreads ink.”‘The right to peacefully protest needs better supporters.’ Freedom Forum Fellow Lata Nott says an Indiana lawmaker’s proposed “Support Peaceful Protest Act” seems in fact to be designed to “make individuals think twice before attending any sort of protest.”
■ Columnist Irv Leavitt: “For winning over people still on the fence, you can’t top images of defenseless but brave partisans being attacked with billy clubs, firehose streams and police dogs, and not raising a hand.”
■ A federal judge has at least temporarily ordered Detroit cops to stop using batons, gas and rubber bullets on peaceful protesters.
■ Without a late Oregon Supreme Court justice who concluded that state’s free-speech protections are more expansive than those in the First Amendment, a Portland journalist says protests there “wouldn’t have been the same.”
‘I finally know who I am.’ Daniel Thompson, an editor who quit Wisconsin’s Kenosha News over an inflammatory quote in the headline of a protest story, says he’ll use a GoFundMe windfall to launch new projects.
■ His ex-boss conceded the headline was “a little bit insensitive.”
■ Thompson tells CNN’s Reliable Sources podcast: “I don’t think the old ways of covering things … works anymore.”
It’s that time. Theft of campaign yard signs around the country is triggering First Amendment protests in letters to editors—for instance, here in Iowa and here in Florida.
Not that free. Ruling in the case of a man who—without permission—took and transmitted intimate photos of a person changing in a bathroom, a Texas appeals court says the state’s “Invasive Visual Recording” ban doesn’t conflict with freedom of speech.
■ Hotel Management ponders whether bosses can terminate an employee for offensive social media posts.