[This is the final 2020 edition of this newsletter. We’ll return to our every-other-week schedule Jan. 5.]
‘The numbers are staggering.’ The Freedom of the Press Foundation reports an unprecedented number of journalists arrested this year in the United States.
■ Arrests from May 29 to June 4 exceeded the previous three years combined.
■ Guess which city saw the most.
‘If you play to the audience you imagine you have and you are an all-white newsroom, then you only serve your white audiences.’ A veteran local news reporter offers her take on “the real reason local newspapers are dying.”
■ The San Francisco Chronicle: “The San Francisco Board of Supervisors was on track to out-trump President Trump by pulling official city advertising from a neighborhood newspaper because the supes didn’t like its coverage of them” … but then backtracked.
Happy Bill of Rights Day. Free Speech Center director Ken Paulson: “229 years ago, America became … America.”
■ Study these National Archives resources on the ratification of the first 10 amendments to the Constitution …
■ … then take this quiz. (Image: iStock.)
‘This campaign was designed to … undermine legitimately conducted elections.’ Legal notices from voting-technology company Smartmatic demand reactionary news channels Fox News, One America News and Newsmax apologize for the spreading of what it calls “baseless conspiracy theories” about it.
■ The Washington Post: Newsmax and One America News in particular are struggling uneasily with the reality of President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory.
■ A federal judge has dismissed a free-speech lawsuit over an executive order Trump issued after Twitter started dinging him for misinformation.
■ A small New York town is weighing the First Amendment against complaints of “sign pollution”—homeowners displaying campaign signs well after an election’s been settled.
‘If I don’t fight, then this case becomes precedent.’ 2 Live Crew alumnus Luther Campbell looks back with Spin on the 30th anniversary of a landmark censorship trial he and two other members of the group faced.
■ Massachusetts’ highest court says a law forbidding people from panhandling on public roads violates the First Amendment.
How free is speech on college campuses? A first-of-its-kind ranking of 55 major U.S. schools puts the University of Chicago at the top.
■ Harvard and Yale? Not so great.
