■ “That’s the path that he chose,” said Bari Weiss, the CBS News editor in chief, to The New York Times about Scott Pelley’s dismissal.
■ Pelley, in his own words, shares details about the explosive series of events that led to his firing at CBS News in an interview with The New York Times.
■ A coalition of press-freedom groups has publicly warned that CNN will be the next news outlet to suffer upheaval similar to those at CBS News.
■ Local television stations owned by ABC have blasted the Federal Communications Commission for launching an early review of their broadcast licenses, calling it “arbitrary and unconstitutional.”
Courage or capitulation. Telling a symposium audience that he has never been “so afraid for the future of our democracy,” UC Berkeley’s law dean called for greater resistance to First Amendment attacks by the Trump administration.
■ James Comey’s “86 47” seashell post on Instagram is lodged in the murky middle between protected free speech and criminal intent, explained Quinnipiac University law professor Wayne Unger.
■ A single passage from Alex Haley’s “Roots” has prompted the Knox County Board of Education to challenge Tennessee’s Age-Appropriate Materials Act that requires the removal of any K-12 library book from public-school shelves.
■ In deleting a constituent’s comment about the financing of a sinkhole from his Facebook page, Omaha’s mayor engaged in viewpoint discrimination, a violation of the First Amendment, a federal court has ruled.
Cup cuffs? Concerned that the United States is no longer a safe place to report on events, foreign journalists fear persecution as they travel to this country to cover the FIFA World Cup soccer matches, according to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.
■ A report from the International Sports Press Association declared that Iranian and African journalists have been denied necessary visas to cover the World Cup, which begins June 11.
■ Advisory board members of the military newspaper Stars and Stripes have sued the Pentagon claiming that new restrictions on coverage are tantamount to illegal censorship, The Washington Post reported.
■ Declaring it a “classified space,” the Pentagon unironically has barred journalists from its press office.
■ More than a dozen press organizations in New Jersey have demanded that charges be dismissed against journalists arrested while covering the recent protests outside Newark’s Delaney Hall detention center.
Enter the historians. Donald Trump’s fight to gain control of his presidential records while ignoring the Presidential Records Act has taken on a historical element in a new lawsuit, which asks “Who owns history?”
■ Trump’s legal team failed to provide financial information to BBC lawyers in his $10 billion defamation suit against the broadcaster, effectively stalling the case, the Financial Times reported.
■ First Amendment advocates contend that the Trump administration’s push to have federal workers sign nondisclosure agreements to minimize news leaks is simply a way to stifle and silence them, The Hill reported.
■ Philadelphia police are tracking First Amendment activity on social media that is critical of AI data centers, according to documents obtained by The Intercept.
■ Nashville Zoo neighbors launched an online petition to persuade city leaders to stop construction of a planned 69,000-square-foot AI data center.
Dinnertime. With enhanced safety measures in place, as well as an RSVP from President Trump, the White House Correspondents’ dinner – cut short in April by a gunman – has been rescheduled for July 24.
■ The 2023 police raid on the Marion County Record that made national headlines is now the subject of a new documentary, “Seized,” which will have its premiere June 13 in the nation’s capital.
■ Fallout from the Minnesota church protest that saw former news anchor Don Lemon arrested has prompted states to toughen penalties for the disruption of worship services.
■ The University of Alabama did not violate students’ free-speech rights when it shut down two university-sponsored campus magazines, a federal judge ruled.
■ The University of Alabama did not violate students’ free-speech rights when it shut down two university-sponsored campus magazines, a federal judge ruled.