This morning as soon as I woke up, I went immediately to search for news from Ukraine. It’s hard to imagine a more important, more devastating story gripping the world right now. It is not a local story for much of America, yet, and its significance is undoubtedly greater to those of us who lived…
To understand why New York Times v. Sullivan is one of the great First Amendment victories of the past century, take a journey back to the segregated America of the1960s. America was a place where racial segregation and discrimination were the law of the land and a way of life in the South, Midwest and…
From afar, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson’s attempt to prosecute a St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter looks like the folly of a vindictive politician who doesn’t understand computers or the First Amendment. But it is more serious than that. A governor trying to prosecute a journalist for reporting publicly available information poses a serious threat to press…
A young TV reporter in West Virginia recently was struck by a vehicle while reporting on a water main break. The local NBC-affiliate where she worked never broke from the story, even as it was clear she had been run over. WSAZ-TV stayed live as Tori Yorgey yelped and exclaimed, “I just got hit by…
A recent report tracking the public’s attitudes and experiences with COVID-19 vaccinations illustrates the extent of misinformation out there as we head into another long pandemic winter. The Kaiser Family Foundation COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor–a non-partisan source of health news—found that nearly eight in 10 of the people surveyed are unsure about at least one common…