Category Archives: First Amendment

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BRIEF-Halozyme Therapeutics, unit entered into first amendment to amended, restated lease with BMR-11388 ... - Reuters

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Tuesday, July 4, 2017, 2:05 PM

On the verge of Independence Day, President Trump took time out from his busy schedule of press suppression and destruction of the First Amendment to exercise his right of free speech for himself.

He posted what appears to be a slightly altered video created originally by extreme Reddit user/bigot HanA------Solo who has a history of posting racist, violence-laden filth.

Until our President tweeted out the altered WWE video, HanA------Solo had been fairly obscure, rutting around on the darkest of fringes with hateful posts on his subreddit feed filled with violence, racism and bigotry of every kind.

Jonathan A. Greenblatt, the Anti-Defamation League CEO, called him out as an individual who "traffics in online hatred and at times violent rhetoric, has created an image labeling CNN journalists with Stars of David and has written about stabbing Muslims among other violent rhetoric."

Celebrities slam President Trumps CNN WrestleMania tweet

Now the creep is a celeb among the hateful, all thanks to Donald Trump and thanks to freedom of speech.

For guys including the President who hate free speech, they certainly know how to use it to their advantage.

Shortly, Trump will head to Hamburg for the G20 where he'll meet with his friend/not friend Vlad the Impaler Putin where he can get some tips from a real pro. Putin is a master at dismantling the independent media, jailing freethinkers, and when all else fails, poisoning critics.

We don't do that. Yet.

Reddit troll takes credit for altered gif of Trump-CNN brawl

Recently I gave a speech sponsored by the Civil Liberties Union about how in 1733, a German immigrant named John Peter Zenger printed a publication titled The New York Journal. He was sued for libel for daring to criticize abusive, corrupt royal governor William Cosby. (No, not that Bill Cosby.)

Zenger's wife kept printing the paper anyway and Andrew Hamilton signed on as Zenger's lawyer.

Even though it was against the law at the time to print anti-government publications, he was found not guilty. Thus began the quest for America's most important freedom the First Amendment, which we are NOW, after 228 years, truly in danger of losing.

That's why the First Amendment freedom of the press, speech, religion, assembly and the right to petition the government comes first before all others.

Trump tweets edited clip of himself at WrestleMania punching CNN

The President is now at war with the press despite declaring "I love the First Amendment! Nobody loves it better than me." If you remember, he tweeted this out just before arbitrarily barring several publications from the daily White House press briefings and even trying to get away with making the use of video verboten.

Declaring his love of the First Amendment by warring against it is as dumb as Gov. Christie lying that he didn't get any sun on the beach that was closed to taxpayers before getting busted.

How can any American, no matter how far to the right, think attempted suppression of the press is OK? It's never OK to bar or try to suppress information in a free society. It's what our ancestors died for. It's what we should at least be willing to fight for.

When it comes to this, our most important freedom, Trump is nothing more than Putin with a shirt on.

ADL slams Reddit troll behind CNN-Trump clip for racist comments

And it's not funny. Anymore.

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STASI: Even Trump can't body-slam the First Amendment - New York Daily News

By DAVID HARSANYI July 04. 2017 11:20PM Last week, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case of Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips, who refused to create a specialty wedding cake for a same-sex couple in Colorado in 2012. The stories dominating coverage distort the publics understanding of the case.

No matter how many times people repeat it, the case isnt about discrimination or challenging gay marriage. But when the news first broke, USA Today, for example, tweeted, The Supreme Court has agreed to reopen the national debate over same-sex marriage. The headline (and story) on the website was worse; it read, Supreme Court will hear religious liberty challenge to gay weddings. Others similarly framed the case.

There is an impulse to frame every issue as a clash between the tolerant and the closed-minded. But the Masterpiece case doesnt challenge the issue of same-sex marriage in America. Gay marriage wasnt even legal in Colorado when this incident occurred.

A person with only passing interest in this case might be led to believe that Phillips is fighting to hang a No Gays Allowed sign in his shop. In truth, he never refused to serve a gay couple. He didnt even really refuse to sell David Mullins and Charlie Craig a wedding cake. They could have bought without incident. Everything in his shop was available to gays and straights and anyone else who walked in his door. What Phillips did was refuse to use his skills to design and bake a unique cake for a gay wedding. Phillips didnt query about anyones sexual orientation. It was the Colorado Civil Rights Commission that took it upon itself to peer into Phillips soul, indict him and destroy his business over a thought crime.

Like many other bakers, florists, photographers, and musicians and millions of other Christians Phillips holds genuine longstanding religious convictions. If Mullins and Craig had demanded that Phillips create an erotic-themed cake, the baker would have similarly refused for religious reasons, just as he had with other costumers. If a couple had asked him to design a specialty cake that read Congrats on the abortion, Jenny! Im certain he would have refused them as well, even though abortions are legal. Its not the people; its the message.

In its tortured decision, the Colorado Court of Appeals admitted as much, contending that while Phillips didnt overtly discriminate against the couple, the act of same-sex marriage is closely correlated to Craigs and Mullins sexual orientation, so it could divine his real intentions.

In other words, the threshold for denying religious liberty and free expression is the presence of advocacy or a political opinion that conflates with faith. The court has effectively tasked itself with determining when religion is allowed to matter to you. Or, in other words, if SCOTUS upholds the lower court ruling, it will empower unelected civil rights commissions which are typically stacked with hard-left authoritarians to decide when your religious actions are appropriate.

How could any honest person believe this was the Constitutions intent? There was a time, Im told, when the state wouldnt substantially burden religious exercise and would use the least restrictive means to further compelling interests. Today, the state can substantially burden a Christian because hes hurt the wrong persons feelings.

Judging from the emails and social media reactions Ive gotten regarding this case, people are not only instinctively antagonistic because of the players involved, but also because they dont understand the facts. In this era of identity politics, some have been programed to reflexively side with the person making accusations of status-based discrimination, all in an effort to empower the state to coerce a minority of people to see the world their way.

Well, not all people. In 2014, a Christian activist named William Jack went to a Colorado bakery and requested two cakes in the shape of a Bible, one to be decorated with the Bible verses God hates sin. Psalm 45:7 and Homosexuality is a detestable sin. Leviticus 18:22, and the other cake to be decorated with another passage. The bakery refused. Even though Christians are a protected group, the Colorado Civil Rights Division threw out the case. The American Civil Liberties Union called the passages obscenities. I guess the Bible doesnt correlate closely enough with a Christians identity.

Or perhaps weve finally established a state religion in this country: Its run on the dogma of social justice.

.

David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist.

Business Politics Social issues Courts Oped

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David Harsanyi: Fighting for the First Amendment, not against gay marriage - The Union Leader

In a six-year First Amendment battle, Courthouse News has filed its appellate brief defending Federal Judge James Oteros finding that the court clerk in Venturamust let the press see new civil actions before they are processed.

Californias Judicial Council has tried in a number of ways to roll back traditional press access where journalists would review the new cases before they were docketed. That term is now subsumed into the word processing, the set of procedures applied to get a new case into a court computer system.

The diehard resistance by the council and clerk Michael Planet to pre-processing access contrasts with the prompt and efficient resolution of the same issue in a number of other federal jurisdictions.

Planet undervalues the First Amendment, the medias role in democracy, and the importance of access to civil records, says the 90-page brief filed by CNS lawyers late Friday before the long Fourth of July weekend.

In the preceding 74-page brief, clerk and council argued, It has always been Ventura Superior Courts policy to provide reasonable access to all civil records.

On the cases third trip to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the clerk relied on an argument made intermittently in the six years of litigation, claiming that the First Amendment right of access does not attach to civil filings until a judge makes a ruling, an event that generally comes months if not years after a new case is filed.

The same underlying issue press access before processing was quickly resolved last year in the Southern District of New York. Ruling from the bench, Judge Edgardo Ramos enjoined the state court clerk in Manhattan from withholding access while he processed the new cases.

I find that injunctive relief would serve the public interest, said Ramos from the bench. There is, of course, an important First Amendment interest in timely access.

The injunction was granted in December, about one month after CNS filed the action, and by the end of January, the Manhattan clerk had set up an electronic in-box that allowed journalists to see the new cases the moment they are filed. E-filing is required in many New York courts, including Manhattan.

Since the ruling by Ramos, eight county courts in and around New York City have set up in-boxes for the press, providing access along the same lines as federal courts.

In an earlier Texas case on the same issue, U.S. District Court Judge Melinda Harmon enjoined the Houston clerk who was withholding access while he docketed, scanned and put paper-filed complaints online.

In both cases, the litigation cost less than on tenth of the millions of dollars spent to establish prompt access in one small court in California.

In the California case, Judge Otero in the Central District ruled last year that the First Amendment attaches to new civil actions upon their receipt by the Ventura clerk. In his judgment, he wrote that the press has the right to see the new cases before they are processed, whether they are paper-filed or e-filed.

The clerk and council then appealed his ruling to the Ninth Circuit, where judges Kim Wardlaw, Mary Murguia and N. Randy Smith will hear the case.

At the same time, Otero declined a request to publish his ruling which ran 30, single-spaced pages and, in response to CNSs request for attorney fees as the prevailing party, cut the lodestar amount by 63 percent. That cut, reducing a $5 million cost to a roughly $2 million reimbursement, is the subject of a cross-appeal by CNS and explains the length of the brief.

Since then, Oteros writ has not extended very far, even within the Central District.

A small set of clerks have stonewalled the ruling, including Orange County Clerk David Yamasaki who continues to withhold access to newly filed complaints until after processing. In an action filed by CNS against Yamasaki, seeking to enforce the guts of Oteros ruling, Otero declined to take the case as related.

It was assigned to Judge Andrew Guilford in Santa Ana who tentatively ruled that it is OK to withhold the new cases until they are reviewed for confidentiality, at which time they are also processed.

As a result of that tentative, which the judge has signaled he will confirm, a new case filed in Orange County at the same time as the CNS brief was filed, late on Friday, would be considered provided to the press in a timely fashion, even if it is made available on Wednesday morning, five days later. By way of contrast,the Ninth Circuit brief was available for review upon receipt, late Friday afternoon, before what many are taking as a long weekend.

In fact, most cases filed in Orange County on Friday were withheld and will not be seen for five days. Likewise, all new cases filed on Monday in Orange County were withheld.

A few other clerks, in Santa Barbara and San Jose, for example, are also stonewalling Oteros ruling, and withholding new cases from the press while the clerks process them into their case management systems. San Jose is a paper court while Santa Barbara has put in place e-filing software by Tyler Technologies.

In courts outside California, Tyler which makes the popular Odyssey case management system provides the press with an electronic in-box, in other words access before processing.

Traditionally, reporters gathered at the end of the day in the clerks office to review the days new civil cases, a potent source of news, long before they were docketed. That was true in the Central District and the rest of the federal courts in California, as well as Los Angeles and Orange County superior courts, among many others in the state and across the nation.

That tradition has come under attack from within the Judicial Council and from its staff who wrote a definition into statewide e-filing rules that a clerk wishing to withhold access could use as justification. That rule was passed by the council over the objection of the L.A. Times and a good part of the rest of the press corps in California.

The most loyal defenders of the withholding practice have been in courts, including Orange County and Ventura, that were early adopters of the Court Case Management System, software pushed by the Judicial Council that was meant to usher in e-filing but wound up as a half-billion-dollar waste of public funds.

In their Ninth Circuit brief on behalf of the council and the clerk, Robert Naeve, Craig Stewart, Erica Reilley, Jaclyn Stahl with Jones Day, and Frederick Hayes with his own law offices, argued the First Amendment does not attach when a new civil case is filed.

Rather than impose upon state court clerks a constitutional stopwatch, which starts ticking the moment a complaint is received, this Court should hold that access to civil complaints should be considered timely so long as they are made available to the public at the time the parties see judicial resolution of the issues arising from the complaint e.g., a motion to dismiss, a summary judgment motion, or trial, they wrote.

In their Ninth Circuit brief on behalf of CNS, Roger Myers, Rachel Matteo-Boehm, Jonathan Fetterly and Leila Knox with Bryan Cave cited a long list of recent appellate opinions in support of Oteros finding that Complaints have historically been made available to the press and public soon after they are received by the court.

The clerk is also arguing on appeal that he does not know what timely access means, and so Oteros decision is too vague. But most weeks since the Oteros ruling, the clerk has provided access to every single new complaint on the day it was filed, suggesting he understands the import of the ruling and how to put it into effect.

The CNS brief also outlined a standard that provides some elasticity in the application of Oteros ruling: If complaints are not withheld pending processing and can be viewed during the hours they can be filed, the result is access soon after they are received by the court, which is timely. That will usually be the day of filing, but there may be instances where complaints are delayed without violating the injunction.

In their final paragraphs, the clerk and council argued, An ordinary person reading the injunction would not be able to determine what is meant by in a timely manner. Hence, the district courts injunction must be vacated for vagueness.

They concluded, The district courts order granting summary judgment in favor of CNS and entering a permanent injunction against Ventura Superior Court should be reversed.

In their contrary conclusion, the CNS lawyers wrote, As CNSs declarations demonstrate, there is a long history of courts making complaints and exhibits publicly available upon receipt.

But in California, a few clerks in courts that adopted the ill-fated Court Case Management System refuse to budge. Influential on and funded by the state Judicial Council, they seek to upturn history and logic by allowing clerks to treat complaints as private until after processing, judicial action, judgment, or forever if a case settles first.

Forced to spend a small fortune over six years and three appeals to right this public wrong at just one court, the brief wound up, CNS respectfully requests this Court affirm the merits order, so clerks cannot deny access until after processing.

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CNS Files Ninth Circuit Brief in Six-Year First Amendment Odyssey - Courthouse News Service

Theres a problem with attorney advertising in the prescription medical product space but its not the one you normally hear us defense-side litigators kvetching about. Quite apart from its litigation-generating effects, attorney advertising can have adverse public health consequences when all the anti-pharma hyperbole causes patients to cease taking targeted products in violation of their physicians orders. That problem is worse with some products than with others. Currently, plaintiff-side lawyers and their litigation funder enablers have decided to target virtually all modern anticoagulant drugs (e.g., Effient, Eliquis, Plavix, Pradaxa, Xarelto) because they can cause (surprise) severe bleeding. Thats a big problem because abruptly stopping those medications can very easily be fatal. Nor is it the only example. Halting, say, an anti-diabetes medication can lead to serious complications, although one would hope not in such a dramatic fashion as a stroke.

Congress held hearings on patient injuries caused by attorney advertising last month. Heres a link to the testimony of the witnesses. Two doctors testified about the impact of sensationalistic lawyer advertising on their patients, including patients who had died after being induced to stop taking their medicine by all the bombast. A law professor testified about a law review article that discussed the difficulties of bar associations regulating such advertising, when it is often carried out by non-lawyers whose physical locations (lawyers are regulated on a state-by-state basis) are unclear. A lawyer also testified, who raised First Amendment objections essentially to any regulation of attorney advertising even when limited to issues affecting the public health.

We want to address that last point.

To the attorney advertisers, we say welcome to the club. Our medical device and pharmaceutical clients, when they engage in advertising including direct-to-consumer advertising are engaged in the same type of speech as our adversaries, at least from a First Amendment perspective. Its all commercial speech. Weve written lots of blogposts on commercial speech, most being variations on the theme that the FDA cant ban truthful commercial speech. We readily extend the same consideration to our opponents. The government cant ban truthful attorney advertising either.

That said, the First Amendment isnt an obstacle to the kind of regulation that was considered at the recent hearing. Disclaimers? Those are childs play, constitutionally. Judicial opinions recommend them frequently, when they hold disclaimers to be an alternative to advertising bans of various types (not just involving drugs). E.g., ECM BioFilms, Inc. v. FTC, 851 F.3d 599, 617 (6th Cir. 2017) (the Commission was not required to adopt the least restrictive disclaimer); Pearson v. Shalala, 164 F.3d 650, 659 (D.C. Cir. 1999) (we suspect that a clarifying disclaimer could be added to the effect that The evidence in support of this claim is inconclusive.); American Home Products Corp. v. FTC, 695 F.2d 681, 696-702 (3d Cir. 1982) (agency may order advertiser making unsubstantiated scientific claim to include a disclaimer to that effect). Indeed, as to attorney advertising itself, the Supreme Court pointed out:

[Attorneys] constitutionally protected interest in not providing any particular factual information in his advertising is minimal. Thus, in virtually all our commercial speech decisions to date, we have emphasized that because disclosure requirements trench much more narrowly on an advertisers interests than do flat prohibitions on speech, warnings or disclaimers might be appropriately required in order to dissipate the possibility of consumer confusion or deception.

Zauderer v. Office of Disciplinary Counsel, 471 U.S. 626, 651 (1985) (citation and quotation marks omitted). The proposal during the hearings that attorney advertisements, at least those concerning certain products, be required to state, with equal emphasis, that under no circumstances should anyone stop their treatment without first consulting their doctor, is 100% constitutional.

Indeed, if anything, that proposal is constitutionally conservative. Attorney advertisers targeting prescription medical products are simply the flip side of prescription medical product manufacturers in this regard. Anything the FDA can require our clients to do, it could, constitutionally at least require attorney advertisers to do if it had the regulatory authority. Theoretically, Congress could confer on the FDA the power to regulate all advertising concerning FDA-regulated products, not just that originating with the entities that the FDA now regulates. We dont advocate doing this, because we think that the FDA has more important work to do than evaluate attorney advertising. Nor are we wild about giving an FDA imprimatur to whatever attorney advertisements that could survive the agencys standards. But from a constitutional perspective the FDA could undertake such regulation. Since commercial speech is commercial speech, the FDA (or some other regulatory body) could impose on lawyer advertising the same standards for balance and scientific support that our clients advertising, both DTC and otherwise, must already meet. Moreover, an agency could make the attorney advertisers pay for the review process, just as our clients do, through user fees.

The bottom line is this: Lawyer advertising holds no preferred position among types of commercial speech. Indeed, there are no types of commercial speech its all the same constitutionally. So when attorneys on the other side advocate bans on truthful manufacturer speech, because supposedly even truthful off-label information is a threat to the public health, they should remember that the same thing can be said about truthful attorney advertising.

Were quite willing to apply the same standards to both sides. Truthful commercial speech about prescription medical products (or anything else) cannot be banned, but that doesnt prohibit the FDA (or some other entity) from exercising the power at least to review it first. As far as disclaimers, look no further than 21 C.F.R. 101.93(c)(2). Every lawyer advertisement about FDA-regulated products could quite constitutionally be required to state, These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.

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Both Sides Equal Under the First Amendment - JD Supra (press release)

Every year the First Amendment Center of the Newseum Institute conducts the State of the First Amendment survey, which examines Americans views on freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly and petition, and samples their opinions on contemporary First Amendment issues.

The results of the 2017 survey show that, despite coming out of one of the most politically contentious years in U.S. history, most Americans remain generally supportive of the First Amendment. When asked if the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees, 69 percent of survey respondents disagreed.

However, there are ideological divisions in attitudes toward the First Amendment, with liberals and conservatives disagreeing on the amount of protection the First Amendment should provide in certain scenarios. Conservatives were more likely than liberals to believe government officials who leak information should be prosecuted and the government should be able to hold Muslims to a higher level of scrutiny. However, liberals were more likely than conservatives to think that colleges should be able to ban speakers with controversial views and people should not be able to express racist views on social media.

This year, 43 percent of Americans agreed that news media outlets try to report the news without bias a significant improvement from only 23 percent in 2016. However, a majority of Americans (61 percent) expressed a preference for news information that aligns with their own views, demonstrating that many Americans may not view biased news in a negative light. The 2017 survey also attempted to assess the impact of the fake news phenomenon. Seventy-four percent of Americans did not think that fake news reports should be protected by the First Amendment, and about one-third (34 percent) reported a decrease in trust in news obtained from social media.

Regarding freedom of religion, 59 percent of Americans believe religious freedom should apply to all religious groups, even those widely considered as extreme or fringe. The age group least likely to agree with this is Americans between the ages of 18 and 29: Just 49 percent of them supported protection for all religious faiths, compared to more than 60 percent for every other age group.

On free speech, 43 percent of Americans felt that colleges should have the right to ban controversial campus speakers. Those who strongly agreed or disagreed with this tended to be current students and/or activists (people who had participated in political actions during the past year, such as signing a petition or attending a protest) on both sides of the political spectrum. Other Americans even those in the 18 to 29-year-old millennial demographic were more lukewarm on this issue.

We were glad to find that most Americans still support the First Amendment, although its troubling that almost one in four think that we have too much freedom, said Lata Nott, executive director of the First Amendment Center. Its also troubling that even people who support the First Amendment in the abstract often dislike it when its applied in real life.

Survey conducted and supported by Fors Marsh Group, and contributing support provided by the Gannett Foundation.

Read the full report: http://www.newseuminstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/FAC_SOFA17_report.pdf

First Amendment Center

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STATE OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT - Burlington Hawk Eye

The U.S. Constitutions Bill of Rights rightly gives robust protections to Americans free expression of ideas, even when those thoughts are out of the mainstream or repulsive.

Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black summed up that vital concept in 1961 when he wrote that the right to expression under the First Amendment must be accorded to the ideas we hate, or sooner or later they will be denied to the ideas we cherish.

That principle received worthwhile discussion and elaboration recently when the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the importance of preserving free speech rights on college campuses.

First Amendment experts offered thoughtful observations on the enduring importance of promoting free thought and expression.

Floyd Abrams, a lawyer with a background in First Amendment cases, said the proper approach cannot be to limit expression but to discuss it not to bar offensive speech, but to answer it. Or to ignore it. Or to persuade the public to reject it. . . . What is unacceptable is to suppress the speech.

Eugene Volokh, a law professor at the University of California Los Angeles, said, To let hecklers and thugs generally control what is said on campus . . . is an abdication of the universities responsibility to educate to teach their students about the importance of responding to speech with arguments and not with suppression. . . .

Outside the university, when youre trying to persuade voters whom you cant threaten with expulsion or firing, you need to know how to listen and rebut even views that you find wrong even disgusting. That takes practice and what better place for that practice than a university, an institution that is supposed to be all about ideas, debate, reasoning and arguments? Precisely.

J. Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center which is studying hate groups, said his organization is sometimes contacted for advice by students who want to take a stand against a campus speaker they consider offensive.

We suggest creating an alternative event, Cohen said, to provide an open and accepting space for those who want to promote unity rather than divisiveness. We tell leaders that it is their obligation to communicate to their community that they stand for the values of inclusion, pluralism and respect.

The nations universities, Cohen said, should be places where students learn to dissent in thoughtful and constructive ways. To do so is to uphold societys highest ideals.

The principles explained by those testifiers dont mean that every idea is worthy or admirable. The point, rather, is that society is best served by open, energetic debate in which arguments are rigorously tested. Such debate exposes mistaken, outlandish or abhorrent ideas to the light and makes them vulnerable to rebuttal and, as needed, ridicule.

Theres another reason why Americans should hold tight to First Amendment principles: We live in a lamentably polarized society. Many people isolate themselves within their political tribe and are so disdainful of the other side that they see little value in engaging in serious debate.

Such thinking undermines productive discussion of key issues. It also harms the country by preventing us from seeing ourselves as one people.

Our society is well served when we encourage strong, open debate under the First Amendment. Our institutions of higher learning need to be unwavering in promoting free expression and the defense of free speech.

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Editorial: First Amendment means free people have free expression - Omaha World-Herald

Eric Wiley @EWileySJ

MARION The First Amendment in the United States Constitution has more meaning to people than ever before, but it also is abused more than ever, David Merritt told a crowd at the Marion City Library Saturday.

Merritt, an author and journalist for 60 years, including tenures as editor of The Wichita Eagle and Charlotte Observer, called the current dialogue between MSNBC Morning Joe hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough and President Donald Trump demeaning.

Its so demeaning to the country, demeaning to the office of the president and demeaning to the media, he said. There are media outlets not playing journalism, theyre playing some other game. Its all about ratings. Theyre (Brzezinski and Scarborough) getting not only what they deserve, but what they wanted.

Merritt's talk was sponsored by the Marion County Democratic Party and served as a fundraiser for the Marion County Food Bank. More than $70 was raised.

Merritt said the fight for the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech and of the press, wasnt that easy. He called it a bitter political fight.

In the early 1900s, newspapers were thoroughly politically oriented. Then publishers decided, Why should we every day offend half of our potential readers and half of our potential advertisers,' he said. What began to evolve was what publishers liked to call a sort of objectivity.

Web caused changes

Merritt said because of that, newspapers were better prepared to help the public through the terrible events of the first half of the 20th century, such as the Great Depression.

He said there was pressure in the 1960s for privately owned newspapers to go public, because of tax and inheritance laws.

"It was tough to pass along that property, he said.

In the mid 1990s, Merritt said, a real cloud that none of us saw coming changed how we perceive the First Amendment.

The Internet put anybody in the news business. Anybody could talk to anybody in the world. You dont have to be smart, you just need a modem and a keyboard, Merritt said. Everyone doesnt just have free speech. Everyone has a megaphone.

Everyone protected

Merritt said people were able to convince Congress that in order for the Internet to reach its potential, it needed to be protected against lawsuits.

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, signed in 1996, maintains that providers of Internet are not publishers. They are providing a service and not subject to laws about libel and defamation, he said. So somebody can write something about you, something really, really indecent and Facebook and the providers can say they just provide a service and are not publishers. You cant sue Facebook. They can put out anything they want and theyre not liable for it.

Furthermore, that unemployed guy in the basement in his pajamas with his computer is protected.

It's a First Amendment protection, Merritt said.

"When an Internet site or blog doesn't abide by the same standards as traditional newspapers and radio, does that deserve the same protection of the First Amendment? he asked the crowd. As painful as it is, the answer is yes. The Internet has bolstered the First Amendment.

There is reason for optimism, Merritt said.

People like you are the only ones who can do anything about that," he said.

He said representatives in Congress hear when people all their offices, and they know how many times they call.

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Merritt speaks on first amendment in Marion - Salina Journal

Its a report that I have been reading every year since its inception in the late 1990s, and while it might not be on your radar, I highly recommend the annual State of the First Amendment.

This is the 20th survey in this series, and the report is compiled after a survey by the First Amendment Center of the Newseum Institute.

Many years ago, I was part of a group of journalists who visited with those who conduct the survey.

They asked us some of the questions. It was interesting how even journalists sometimes had issues with the amendment that is virtually the only license we need to do our jobs.

First, as a refresher, heres the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

While it may seem simple and straightforward, the First Amendment and how it can be applied is often misconstrued and often debated.

Here are a few of the questions on the survey. Before you leap ahead, try answering them for yourself.

Question 1: The First Amendment became part of the U.S. Constitution more than 225 years ago.

Based on your own feelings about the First Amendment, please answer whether you agree ordisagree with the following statements: TheFirst Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees.

Question 2:It is important for our democracy that the news media act as a watchdog on government.

Question 3:Overall, the news media tries to report the news without bias.

Question 4: In general, do you prefer news information that is aligned with your own views?

So how do your views line up with those of the more than 1,000 people surveyed in May of this year? By the way, this is the first year question four has been on the survey.

If youve jotted down your answers, read away for a comparison.

Twenty-three percent of those surveyed said they agreed that the First Amendment goes too far in protecting rights. In 1999 when the question was asked, 28 percent of those surveyed thought it went too far.

The news media still must act as the watchdog on government said 68 percent of those surveyed. That number was higher in 2004, when 77 percent agreed.

Based on some of the comments I hear, this one pleasantly surprised me. Forty-three percent of those surveyed agreed that the news media tries to report the news without bias. In 2004, only 39 percent agreed with that statement.

Question No. 4 indicates that 16.5 percent of the respondents strongly agree that they prefer news from outlets that are aligned with their views; 36.7 percent somewhat agree; 24.5 percent somewhat disagree; 17.3 percent strongly disagree and 5 percent either didnt know or refused to answer the question.

The short version of the report included interesting insight on the divisions in attitudes toward the First Amendment depending on whether the respondent was liberal or conservative.

Conservatives were more likely than liberals to believe that government officials who leak information should be prosecuted and that the government should be able to hold Muslims to a higher level of scrutiny. However, liberals were more likely than conservatives to think that colleges should be able to ban speakers with controversial views and that people should not be able to express racist views on social media.

Its a timely read in advance of the Fourth of July. Go towww.newseuminstitute.org/first-amendment-center/state-of-the-first-amendment to take a look for yourself.

As for me, I feel honored to be a part of a profession that exists because of the foresight of the Founding Fathers. A nation without a free press simply would not be America.

Carol Stark is the editor of the Globe. Her email address is cstark@joplinglobe.com.

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Carol Stark: Survey says First Amendment still in high regard - Joplin Globe

Gazette editor Vince Bzdek March 14, 2016. Photo by Mark Reis, The Gazette

In the span of one day last week, I heard how The Gazette has become a mouthpiece for the globalist neo-communist left and, a few hours later, how we are a hopeless fount of "fake news" for the neo-fascist right. There's an old saying in journalism: If you're pissing off everyone then you must be doing something right.

What animates most journalists I know is not ideology whatsoever, but facts. And it's not necessarily because journalists are noble, ethical, unbiased creatures (though they are, of course). It's more that the pursuit and defense of a point of view is not nearly as interesting as uncovering something no one knew before. It's much more fun to be a curious human being than a walking, talking point of view.

An old colleague of mine, Tom Ricks, a former military reporter, just published a whole book about how hard - and important - it is to see the facts when politicians and other people are trying to hide or distort them. "Churchill and Orwell: The Fight for Freedom" is a book about the two men who last century most clearly saw the "facts" of totalitarianism, on the left and right.

Ricks makes the point that, once a upon a time, it wasn't so clear that communism and Nazism were two sides of the same coin. He writes that George Orwell, author of "Animal Farm" and "1984," alienated his friends on the left when he began to write that communism and Russia had become very totalitarian and Nazi-like. Winston Churchill was also ostracized by many of his colleagues in Parliament because of his persistence that no peace could ever be had - ever - with fascism. Churchill and Orwell saw that both systems gave the state far too much authority over individuals, stealing their basic freedoms away.

Ricks thinks the stubborn clarity of Orwell and Churchill has a lesson for us right now.

"I think in this country, we have especially recently started putting ideology over facts," Ricks said in a radio interview about his book. "And on this I blame both the left and the right. The left and the right both have a responsibility to tell the truth. I don't expect it of politicians. I do expect it of the media, that even when it's uncomfortable, even when it's not supporting your account, your view, your narrative, that the responsibility of journalists and honest intellectuals is to present the facts, to first observe the facts and not to suppress facts that disagree with your own personal views."

Ricks said his favorite Orwell quote came in an interview during the Spanish Civil War, which Orwell fought in and came to see as a dress rehearsal for World War II.

"I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting and complete silence where hundreds of men have been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories. And I saw newspapers in London retailing those lies and eager intellectuals building superstructures over events that had never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written, not in terms of what happened, but of what ought to have happened according to various party lines."

That experience led directly to Orwell's chilling line in "1984:" "Whatever the party holds to be the truth, is truth."

Ricks concludes his book with a passage about the essential importance of finding facts when all odds are against you.

"The fundamental driver of Western civilization is the agreement that objective reality exists, that people of goodwill can perceive it and that other people will change their views when presented with the facts of the matter."

A Washington politician of all people - a Republican senator from Nebraska who was in town for a conference - underscored the importance of this idea for me last week. Ben Sasse made the point that, at this political moment, we need to make sure our freedoms are not compromised or warped or overshadowed by our politics.

"I think we have a whole bunch of people in Washington who think that politics are the center of the world. They think Washington is the center of the world. That's not what our founders intended. As D.C. becomes more and more prominent in our politics and our economics, people who are addicted to politics, they take up an inappropriately large space in the national mindshare. And there are very few people in Washington right now who want to pause our legislative fights, and while lots of those legislative fights are important, there is a civic issue that's prior to that, that is the American idea."

When you boil it down, what is the American idea?

Sasse believes the American idea, what makes us a truly exceptional country, is "the five freedoms of the First Amendment." Freedom of religion, speech, press, association, and the right to petition for the redress of grievances.

"I believe the First Amendment is the beating heart of the American experiment," he said.

And he's "very worried" that the basic Americanism the First Amendment represents is under assault.

It was great to hear a reminder, from a Washington insider himself, that we ought to keep our political battles in perspective, and not lose sight, or God forbid undermine, the very things that make us most American while fighting those fights.

In his recent book, "The Vanishing American Adult," Sasse writes that the "First amendment is a roadmap for how a nation of 320 million people, with an inevitably wide divergence of opinion on theological, existential and cultural matters, can nonetheless guard against the tyranny of the majority and can respect everyone's dignity, everyone's natural rights."

We are more, so much more, than our politics, in other words. We are our freedoms more than our politics.

"Politics is not the center of everything," he told the crowd at the conference. "Politics is a means to an end. Politics is definitely not interesting enough to be an end." Our freedoms, rather than our politics, are what give us the framework for pursuing our happiness, for the work that gives us meaning, and the opportunities to live out our lives with others in the best way we can.

It was incredibly refreshing to hear a politician (Sasse) tell a journalist (me) that freedom of the press is one of the essentials that bind us together and make us American. It's just the kind of stubborn, contrarian clarity that Orwell and Churchill would have embraced themselves.

Continued here:
Vince Bzdek: Freedoms in First Amendment rise above Americans ... - Colorado Springs Gazette