By William H. Freivogel The title of the conference in Mountain View, Calif., was Legal Frontiers in Digital Media, convened appropriately at the Computer History Museum in the heart of Silicon Valley. But every few hours during its sessions last week, the crown jewels of legacy media, The New York Times and the Washington Post,…
Commentary by William H. Freivogel Confidential sources are the lifeblood of reporting about abuses of power by high government officials. Source reporting provides a vital check on presidential power. If the Washington Post hadn’t relied on confidential sources to report about Michael Flynn’s discussions with the Russian ambassador, Flynn might still be the National Security…
by William H. Freivogel President Trump’s entire presidency, his entire political career in fact, has provided the severest test to the mainstream media’s mission of presenting the news fairly and in context. No previous president, not even Nixon, has lied so frequently and campaigned so vigorously to delegitimize mainstream journalism. But Trump’s firing of FBI…
by William H. Freivogel Mike Wolff has helped save men on death row, preserve the St. Louis school desegregation program, end capital punishment for juveniles, protect the vote of poor people, establish jury trials in discrimination cases, preserve jury verdicts in personal injury suits and foster efforts to rid St. Louis’ municipal courts of longstanding…
By William H. Freivogel The most outstanding example of the press and the courts acting together to check the abuse of presidential power is the Pentagon Papers. Congress had fallen down on its oversight during when on Aug. 7, 1964 it approved the Gulf of Tonkin resolution authorizing the Vietnam War. The resolution was based…