Journalists, lawyers and community members gathered April 22 at St. Louis Public Radio to discuss whether the First Amendment is at risk.
Sean Stevens, chief researcher at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, FIRE, said asking the question is to answer in the affirmative. He said his organization received more reports about interference with free speech on college campuses in 2025 than in any previous year. FIRE reported 274 reports of interference with free speech in 2025.
“The First Amendment – at Risk?” forum was organized by The Gateway Journalism Review in conjunction with the Pulitzer Center, which was marking its 20th anniversary of supporting independent journalism across the world. GJR’s First Amendment project is funded by the Pulitzer Center.
“We’re crossing the threshold of our 250th anniversary of the founding – a founding built on America’s embrace of Enlightenment values, freedom, equality, a government of the people. No other nation in history has entrusted power to “We the People”by making the people sovereign as a result,” said William H. Freivogel, publisher of GJR. “The First Amendment rests on the Enlightenment premise unfolding after the Middle Ages if the truth wins over falsity on the battlefield of ideas – although it’s a proposition that seems more problematic today as truth races to catch up with lies and conspiracy theories that reach millions in the instantaneous flash of electrons.”
Freivogel said that Donald Trump effectively ran for office promising to protect free speech from “cancel culture.” But after taking office Trump took a series of breathtakingly broad executive actions directed at the press, universities and law firms that violated their First Amendment rights. Many big media companies, law firms and universities – instead of going to court to defend their First Amendment rights – surrendered them without a fight and even paid Trump for the privilege.”
The event focused on multiple guest speakers who each talked about stories and projects they have been working on that show threats to the First Amendment.
Brian Munoz, Visual Editor of St. Louis Public Radio, talked about a man who immigrated to the United States from Columbia and was later arrested for shoplifting. He was put in jail and about a week later died in detention. Munoz struggled to obtain information about his treatment. “Now we’re seeing an unprecedented lack of information, and that’s what we’re really trying to combat and really work through,” Munoz said.
Munoz noted that deaths in ICE detention had increased to around 30 in the past year. More and more Missouri jurisdictions are making formal arrangements with ICE to cooperate on enforcement and the number of arrests has tripled.
Carly Gist, the Editor-in-Chief for the Daily Egyptian, traveled to Bloomington, Ind. to meet with journalists at the Indiana Daily Student, which was censored last fall and reduced to only seven print editions per semester. The university wanted to eliminate print, but backed down after a national reaction from alumni.
Gist also described efforts by anti-abortion protesters in Carbondale, Il. to counsel women going into the clinics to change their minds. Carbondale has become a hub of abortion clinics because most surrounding states ban abortions. Gist said the anti-abortion protesters still want to persuade the Supreme Court to expand the rights of sidewalk anti-abortion protesters.
Kallie Cox, a reporter for Missouri Lawyers Media, talked about Rachel Rodman, a librarian working in Bourbon, Missouri. “She was fired from her job for refusing to remove a book display featuring adult LGBTQ+ novels in honor of Pride,” Cox said.
Librarians across the state, especially in the smaller districts, were facing a multitude of censorship. “Instead of navigating challenges from politicians, advocacy groups and parents, these librarians are going up against their own supervisors and administrations who are preemptively censoring titles,” Cox said, sometimes with the assistance of AI searches.
Stevens, the chief researcher at FIRE, talked about ranking universities based on their level of protection by the First Amendment. “The data we collected over the past six years,” Stevens said.
“Student political power has declined, self-censorship kind of remains at fairly notable levels,” he said.
The University of Missouri at St. Louis and Columbia ranked high – 11th and 17th respectively – but that still earned them only a C on the FIRE report card. Washington University received a D- and Southern Illinois University Carbondale an F, ranking 223 out of 257 schools ranked.
The report card said “71% of SIUC students say shouting down a speaker to prevent them from speaking on campus is acceptable, at least in rare cases.”
Indiana University also received an F, ranking 255 out of 257. Stevens cited an incident when the university posted a sniper on a roof top during a student protest.
Greg Magarian, a law professor at Washington University, likened First Amendment superheroes in comic books, but said they were currently overshadowed by one blockbuster franchise of Trump using the government to clamp down on free speech.
The event concluded with a panel with Freivogel, Pulitzer CEO Lisa Gibbs, Pulitzer founder Jon Sawyer and moderator Michael Wolff, dean emeritus of the SLU Law School and former chief justice of the Missouri Supreme Court.
“We put a little bit of money into the projects that build on this and on previous projects,” Sawyer said. “I think we’re thinking about the press’ historic role in serving as a watchdog, or even the basic purpose of informing,” Gibbs said.
It is important to keep people updated with what news. “If you don’t sort of put that out and make people aware of it and talk about it, then you’re never going to solve the issues,” Sawyer said. Sawyer criticized the press’s failure during the runup to the war in Iraq to reveal the false U.S. claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
Wolff said that when he went to law school a half century ago, he was taught the First Amendment was a shield protecting citizens against the government. Now, he said, the government sometimes uses it as a cudgel against people expressing disfavored beliefs.
Patricia Wolff, a pediatrician and founder of Meds & Food for Kids, said afterward that “I’m so glad for journalists who give us just the facts.”
