Freedom of the press in the United States is legally protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Freedom of the press in the United States is legally protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
In the Thirteen Colonies before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the newspapers and the works produced by printing presses in general was subject to a series of regulations. British authorities attempted to prohibit the publication and circulation of information of which they did not approve, and often levied charges of sedition and libel as a means of controlling printing presses. [1] [2] [3]
One of the earliest cases concerning freedom of the press occurred in 1734. In a libel case against The New York Weekly Journal publisher John Peter Zenger by British governor William Cosby, Zenger was acquitted and the publication continued until 1751. At that time, there were only two newspapers in New York City and the second was not critical of Cosby's government. [4] [5]
The First Amendment permits information, ideas and opinions without interference, constraint or prosecution by the government. [6] [7] It was adopted on December 15, 1791, as one of the ten amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights.
In 1798, eleven years after adoption of the Constitution and seven years after ratification of the First Amendment, the governing Federalist Party attempted to stifle criticism with the Alien and Sedition Acts. According to the Sedition Act, criticism of Congress or the president (but not the vice-president) was a crime; Thomas Jefferson, a Democratic-Republican, was vice-president when the act was passed. These restrictions on the press were very unpopular, leading to the party's reduction to minority status after 1801, and eventual dissolution in 1824. Jefferson, who vehemently opposed the acts, was elected president in 1800 and pardoned most of those convicted under them. In his March 4, 1801, inaugural address, he reiterated his longstanding commitment to freedom of speech and of the press: "If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it." [8]
In mid-August 1861, four New York City newspapers (the New York Daily News , The Journal of Commerce , the Day Book and the New York Freeman’s Journal ) were given a presentment by a U.S. Circuit Court grand jury for "frequently encouraging the rebels by expressions of sympathy and agreement". This began a series of federal prosecutions during the Civil War of northern U.S. newspapers which expressed sympathy for Southern causes or criticized the Lincoln administration. Lists of "peace newspapers", published in protest by the New York Daily News, were used to plan retributions. The Bangor Democrat in Maine, was one of these newspapers; assailants believed part of a covert Federal raid destroyed the press and set the building ablaze. [9] These actions followed executive orders issued by President Abraham Lincoln; his August 7, 1861, order made it illegal (punishable by death) to conduct "correspondence with" or give "intelligence to the enemy, either directly or indirectly". [10]
The Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, which amended it, imposed restrictions on the press during wartime. The acts imposed a fine of $10,000 and up to 20 years' imprisonment for those publishing "... disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States, or the flag ..." [11] In Schenck v. United States (1919) the Supreme Court upheld the laws, setting the "clear and present danger" standard. Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) revised the clear-and-present-danger test to the significantly less-restrictive "imminent lawless action" test.
The 1931 U.S. Supreme Court decision Near v. Minnesota recognized freedom of the press by roundly rejecting prior restraints on publication, a principle that applied to free speech generally in subsequent jurisprudence. The court ruled that a Minnesota law targeting publishers of malicious or scandalous newspapers violated the First Amendment (as applied through the Fourteenth Amendment).
Freedom of the press was described in 1972's Branzburg v. Hayes as "a fundamental personal right", not confined to newspapers and periodicals. [12] In Lovell v. City of Griffin (1938), [13] Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes defined the press as "every sort of publication which affords a vehicle of information and opinion." [14] This right has been extended to newspapers, books, plays, movies, and video games. [15]
Associated Press v. United States (1945) dealt with media cooperation [16] and consolidation. The court held that the AP violated the Sherman Antitrust Act by prohibiting the sale or proliferation of news to nonmember organizations and keeping nonmembers from joining; the AP bylaws constituted restraint of trade, and the fact that AP had not achieved a monopoly was irrelevant. The First Amendment did not excuse newspapers from the Sherman Antitrust Act. News, traded between states, counts as interstate commerce and is subject to the act. Freedom of the press from governmental interference under the First Amendment does not sanction repression of that freedom by private interests (326 U.S. 20[ clarification needed ]). Justice Hugo Black wrote, "The First Amendment ... rests on the assumption that the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public ... Freedom to publish is guaranteed by the Constitution, but freedom to combine to keep others from publishing is not". [17]
In New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964), the Supreme Court ruled that when a publication involves a public figure, to support a suit for libel the plaintiff bears the burden of proving that the publisher acted with actual malice: knew of the inaccuracy of the statement or acted with reckless disregard of its truth.
In 1970, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a news organization couldn't be sued over the use of "rhetorical hyperbole". The usage in question was when quoting eyewitnesses, but the court ruled that, even if it hadn't, to call it libel "would subvert the most fundamental meaning of a free press".
In 1971, the Supreme Court upheld the publication of the Pentagon Papers.
In Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier (1988), the Supreme Court upheld the right of a school principal to review (and suppress) controversial articles in a school newspaper funded by the school and published in its name.
Although it had been uncertain whether people who blog or use other social media are journalists entitled to protection by media shield laws, [18] they are protected by the Free Speech and Free Press Clauses (neither of which differentiates between media businesses and nonprofessional speakers). [6] [7] [19] This is further supported by the Supreme Court, which has refused to grant increased First Amendment protection to institutional media over other speakers; [20] [21] [22] In a case involving campaign finance laws, the court rejected the "suggestion that communication by corporate members of the institutional press is entitled to greater constitutional protection than the same communication by" non-institutional-press businesses. [23]
In United States v. Manning (2013), Chelsea Manning was found guilty of six counts of espionage for furnishing classified information to WikiLeaks.
On October 26, 2011, the Stop Online Piracy Act, which opponents said would threaten free speech and censor the Internet, was introduced to the U.S. House of Representatives. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said that President Obama "[would] not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression." [24] The bill was shelved in 2012 after widespread protests. [25]
On 2014, blogger Crystal Cox accused Obsidian and Kevin D. Padrick of corrupt and fraudulent conduct. Although the court dismissed most of Cox's blog posts as opinion, it found one post to be more factual in its assertions (and, therefore, defamatory).
It was ruled for the first time, [26] [27] by the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, [28] that a blogger is entitled to the same free speech protection as a journalist and cannot be liable for defamation unless the blogger acted negligently. [29] In the decision, journalists and bloggers are equally protected under the First Amendment [26] because the "protections of the First Amendment do not turn on whether the defendant was a trained journalist, formally affiliated with traditional news entities, engaged in conflict-of-interest disclosure, went beyond just assembling others' writings, or tried to get both sides of a story." [28] : 11–12 [30]
In 2022, the U.S. ranked 42nd in the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index. [31] This is an overall measure of freedom available to the press, including a range of factors including government censorship, control over journalistic access, and whistleblower protections. The U.S.'s ranking fell from 20th in 2010 to 49th in 2015, before recovering to 41st in 2016.
Freedom House, a U.S.-based watchdog organization, ranked the United States 30th out of 197 countries in press freedom in 2014. [32] Its report praised the constitutional protections given American journalists and criticized authorities for placing undue limits on investigative reporting in the name of national security. Freedom House gives countries a score out of 100, with 0 the most free and 100 the least free. The score is broken down into three separately-weighted categories: legal (out of 30), political (out of 40) and economic (out of 30). The United States scored 6, 10, and 5, respectively, that year for a cumulative score of 21. [33]
In a Pew Research survey of 11,889 U.S. journalists conducted from February 16 to March 17, 2022, 57% stated that they were "extremely" or "very" concerned about the prospect of press restrictions being imposed in the United States. [34]
 | |
| Type of business | Press freedom advocates |
|---|---|
Type of site | Data gathering and reporting |
| Founded | 2017 [35] |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Editor | Kirstin McCudden, Managing editor |
| Industry | Journalism |
| URL | pressfreedomtracker |
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker documents press freedom violations in the United States. [36]
The tracker was founded in 2017 and was developed from funds donated by the Committee to Protect Journalists. [35] [36] It is led by the Freedom of the Press Foundation and a group of organizations. Its purpose is "to provide reliable, easy-to-access information on the number of press freedom violations in the United States – from journalists facing chargers to reporters stopped at the U.S. border or asked to hand over their electronics." [37]
The database is supported by a steering committee of Committee to Protect Journalists and twenty press freedom groups. It was developed to document the increasing rate of assaults, seizures of equipment, arrests, and stops at the border. [36] It tracks the type of law enforcement—local, state, and the National Guard—and the nationality of the journalists. [38] The tracker is maintained and findings are published by the Freedom of the Press Foundation. [38] [39] [40]
According to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, in 2020, approximately 300 journalists were assaulted in the U.S. (primarily by law enforcement) and at least 110 were arrested or criminally charged in relation to their reporting. [41]
On September 3, 2022, investigative journalist Jeff German of the Las Vegas Review-Journal was stabbed to death outside his home. [42] Police arrested a government official who was the subject of German's reporting for the murder. [43]
The Alien and Sedition Acts were a set of four laws enacted in 1798 that applied restrictions to immigration and speech in the United States. The Naturalization Act increased the requirements to seek citizenship, the Alien Friends Act allowed the president to imprison and deport non-citizens, the Alien Enemies Act gave the president additional powers to detain non-citizens during times of war, and the Sedition Act criminalized false and malicious statements about the federal government. The Alien Friends Act and the Sedition Act expired after a set number of years, and the Naturalization Act was repealed in 1802. The Alien Enemies Act is still in effect.
Defamation is a communication that injures a third party's reputation and causes a legally redressable injury. The precise legal definition of defamation varies from country to country. It is not necessarily restricted to making assertions that are falsifiable, and can extend to concepts that are more abstract than reputation – like dignity and honour. In the English-speaking world, the law of defamation traditionally distinguishes between libel and slander. It is treated as a civil wrong, as a criminal offence, or both.
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution prevents the government from making laws respecting an establishment of religion; prohibiting the free exercise of religion; or abridging the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, the freedom of assembly, or the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. It was adopted on December 15, 1791, as one of the ten amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights.
Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46 (1988), is a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court held that parodies of public figures, even those intending to cause emotional distress, are protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
Sedition is overt conduct, such as speech or organization, that tends toward rebellion against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent toward, or insurrection against, established authority. Sedition may include any commotion, though not aimed at direct and open violence against the laws. Seditious words in writing are seditious libel. A seditionist is one who engages in or promotes the interest of sedition.
John Peter Zenger (October 26, 1697 – July 28, 1746) was a German printer and journalist in New York City. Zenger printed The New York Weekly Journal. He was accused of libel in 1734 by William Cosby, the royal governor of New York, but the jury acquitted Zenger, who became a symbol for freedom of the press.
New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision ruling that the freedom of speech protections in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution restrict the ability of public officials to sue for defamation. The decision held that if a plaintiff in a defamation lawsuit is a public official or candidate for public office, then not only must they prove the normal elements of defamation—publication of a false defamatory statement to a third party—they must also prove that the statement was made with "actual malice", meaning the defendant either knew the statement was false or recklessly disregarded whether it might be false. New York Times Co. v. Sullivan is frequently ranked as one of the greatest Supreme Court decisions of the modern era.
In the United States, freedom of speech and expression is strongly protected from government restrictions by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, many state constitutions, and state and federal laws. Freedom of speech, also called free speech, means the free and public expression of opinions without censorship, interference and restraint by the government The term "freedom of speech" embedded in the First Amendment encompasses the decision what to say as well as what not to say. The Supreme Court of the United States has recognized several categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment and has recognized that governments may enact reasonable time, place, or manner restrictions on speech. The First Amendment's constitutional right of free speech, which is applicable to state and local governments under the incorporation doctrine, prevents only government restrictions on speech, not restrictions imposed by private individuals or businesses unless they are acting on behalf of the government. However, It can be restricted by time, place and manner in limited circumstances. Some laws may restrict the ability of private businesses and individuals from restricting the speech of others, such as employment laws that restrict employers' ability to prevent employees from disclosing their salary to coworkers or attempting to organize a labor union.
Prior restraint is censorship imposed, usually by a government or institution, on expression, that prohibits particular instances of expression. It is in contrast to censorship that establishes general subject matter restrictions and reviews a particular instance of expression only after the expression has taken place.
Abrams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616 (1919), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States upholding the criminal arrests of several defendants under the Sedition Act of 1918, which was an amendment to the Espionage Act of 1917. The law made it a criminal offense to criticize the production of war materiel with intent to hinder the progress of American military efforts.
Seditious libel is a criminal offence under common law of printing written material with seditious purpose – that is, the purpose of bringing contempt upon a political authority. It remains an offence in Canada but has been abolished in England and Wales.
Libel tourism is a term, first coined by Geoffrey Robertson, to describe forum shopping for libel suits. It particularly refers to the practice of pursuing a case in England and Wales, in preference to other jurisdictions, such as the United States, which provide more extensive defenses for those accused of making derogatory statements.
In the United States, censorship involves the suppression of speech or public communication and raises issues of freedom of speech, which is protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Interpretation of this fundamental freedom has varied since its enshrinement. Traditionally, the First Amendment was regarded as applying only to the Federal government, leaving the states and local communities free to censor or not. As the applicability of states rights in lawmaking vis-a-vis citizens' national rights began to wane in the wake of the Civil War, censorship by any level of government eventually came under scrutiny, but not without resistance. For example, in recent decades, censorial restraints increased during the 1950s period of widespread anti-communist sentiment, as exemplified by the hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. In Miller v. California (1973), the U.S. Supreme Court found that the First Amendment's freedom of speech does not apply to obscenity, which can, therefore, be censored. While certain forms of hate speech are legal so long as they do not turn to action or incite others to commit illegal acts, more severe forms have led to people or groups being denied marching permits or the Westboro Baptist Church being sued, although the initial adverse ruling against the latter was later overturned on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court case Snyder v. Phelps.
Modern libel and slander laws in many countries are originally descended from English defamation law. The history of defamation law in England is somewhat obscure; civil actions for damages seem to have been relatively frequent as far back as the Statute of Gloucester in the reign of Edward I (1272–1307). The law of libel emerged during the reign of James I (1603–1625) under Attorney General Edward Coke who started a series of libel prosecutions. Scholars frequently attribute strict English defamation law to James I's outlawing of duelling. From that time, both the criminal and civil remedies have been found in full operation.
The origins of the United States' defamation laws pre-date the American Revolution; one influential case in 1734 involved John Peter Zenger and established precedent that "The Truth" is an absolute defense against charges of libel. Though the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was designed to protect freedom of the press, for most of the history of the United States, the U.S. Supreme Court failed to use it to rule on libel cases. This left libel laws, based upon the traditional "Common Law" of defamation inherited from the English legal system, mixed across the states. The 1964 case New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, however, radically changed the nature of libel law in the United States by establishing that public officials could win a suit for libel only when they could prove the media outlet in question knew either that the information was wholly and patently false or that it was published "with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not". Later Supreme Court cases barred strict liability for libel and forbade libel claims for statements that are so ridiculous as to be obviously facetious. Recent cases have added precedent on defamation law and the Internet.
United States v. Stevens, 559 U.S. 460 (2010), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States, which ruled that 18 U.S.C. § 48, a federal statute criminalizing the commercial production, sale, or possession of depictions of cruelty to animals, was an unconstitutional abridgment of the First Amendment right to freedom of speech.
The Securing the Protection of our Enduring and Established Constitutional Heritage (SPEECH) Act is a 2010 federal statutory law in the United States that makes foreign libel judgments unenforceable in U.S. courts, unless either the foreign legislation applied offers at least as much protection as the U.S. First Amendment, or the defendant would have been found liable even if the case had been heard under U.S. law.
The Libel trial of Joseph Howe was a court case heard 2 March 1835 in which newspaper editor Joseph Howe was charged with seditious libel by civic politicians in Nova Scotia. Howe's victory in court was considered monumental at the time. In the first issue of the Novascotian following the acquittal, Howe claimed that "the press of Nova-Scotia is Free." Scholars, such as John Ralston Saul, have argued that Howe's libel victory established the fundamental basis for the freedom of the press in Canada. Historian Barry Cahill writes that the trial was significant in colonial legal history because it was a long delayed replay of the Zenger case (1734).
Obsidian Finance Group, LLC v. Cox is a 2011 case from the United States District Court for the District of Oregon concerning online defamation. Plaintiffs Obsidian Finance Group and its co-founder Kevin Padrick sued Crystal Cox for maintaining several blogs that accused Obsidian and Padrick of corrupt and fraudulent conduct. The court dismissed most of Cox's blog posts as opinion, but found one single post to be more factual in its assertions and therefore defamatory. For that post, the court awarded the plaintiffs $2.5 million in damages. This case is notable for the court's ruling that Cox, as an internet blogger, was not a journalist and was thus not protected by Oregon's media shield laws, although the court later clarified that its ruling did not categorically exclude blogs from being considered media and indicated that its decision was based in part upon Cox offering to remove negative posts for a $2,500 fee. In January 2014 the Ninth Circuit Court affirmed in part and reversed in part the district court's judgment awarding compensatory damages to the bankruptcy trustee. It also ordered a new trial on the blog post at issue.
Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment is a 2007 non-fiction book by journalist Anthony Lewis about freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of thought, and the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The book starts by quoting the First Amendment, which prohibits the U.S. Congress from creating legislation which limits free speech or freedom of the press. Lewis traces the evolution of civil liberties in the U.S. through key historical events. He provides an overview of important free speech case law, including U.S. Supreme Court opinions in Schenck v. United States (1919), Whitney v. California (1927), United States v. Schwimmer (1929), New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964), and New York Times Co. v. United States (1971).
In a landmark decision on Friday, a federal appellate court held for the first time that blogs enjoy the same First Amendment protection from libel suits as traditional news media.
I think it sets an important precedent that bloggers, for First Amendment purposes, have the same rights as others do, as for example the institutional media does," Volokh said in a phone interview. "There have been plenty of past cases around the circuits that point in that direction, but this is the first time that the 9th Circuit has specifically ruled on this, and this is one of the cases that has focused on bloggers. Most cases have dealt with other nonprofessional media, but this one is particularly the first clear blogging case that I know from the circuit courts.
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