EFF: When Police Misuse Their Power to Control News Coverage, They Shouldn’t Be Allowed To Use Probable Cause As a Shield Against Claims of First Amendment Violations
When Police Misuse Their Power to Control News Coverage, They Shouldn’t Be Allowed To Use Probable Cause As a Shield Against Claims of First Amendment Violations Journalists face increasingly hostile conditions covering public protests, presidential rallies, corruption, and police brutality in the course of work as watchdogs over government power. A case before the U.S. Supreme Court threatens press freedoms even further by potentially giving the government freer rein to arrest media people in retaliation for publishing stories or gathering news the government doesn’t like. EFF joined the National Press Photographers Association and 30 other media and nonprofit free speech organizations in urging the court to allow lawsuits by individuals who show they were arrested in retaliation for exercising their rights under the First Amendment—for example, in the case of the news media by newsgathering, interviewing protestors, recording events—even if the police had probable cause for the...