Happy 2021! We’re glad to be back after a holiday break. And now the news:
■ Investigative reporter Joshua Eaton suggests Joe Biden’s administration do plenty to let the sunshine back into government. (Image: Andrey Popov/iStock.)
‘It is now nigh unto impossible to quote anyone or share anything anyone else has said.’ Journalism prof Jeff Jarvis files a science-fictional warning from a future after the abolishment of Section 230 …
■ Software developer Steve Randy Waldman writes in The Atlantic that 230 “ruined the internet” by “shifting the costs of scale, like shoddy moderation and homogenized communities, to users and society at large.”
■ The law may well be repealed or revised under Biden’s presidency.
■ The Supreme Court is considering whether to hear the case of an ex-high school cheerleader disciplined after sending vulgar Snapchat messages to friends.
■ Hundreds of present and former students at scandal-scarred Liberty University are calling for the shutdown of a campus “think tank” that their petition complains “constantly preaches … to defend Donald Trump at all costs.”
■ A University of California Merced professor under investigation for a since-deleted Twitter account rife with antisemitic tropes has retained a lawyer specializing in academic First Amendment litigation.
‘Not an uncomplicated victory for the press.’ The Knight First Amendment Institute’s executive director says a United Kingdom judge’s refusal to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to face U.S. charges of espionage nevertheless casts “a dark shadow over investigative journalism.”
■ Columnist Jacob Sullum: The case against Assange is also a case against a free press.
■ GovernmentAttic.org offers electronic copies of thousands of government documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
Thanks to reader Chris Koenig for making this edition better.