Commentary
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Why China’s leaders need to worry about recent events in Iran: Twitter trumps the Great Firewall By Peter Scheer As Iran has its Tianenman moment, no other government is watching events there with more anxiety than China--and with good reason. Both Iran and China are modernizing autocracies committed by a combination of ideology and fear to maintaining control over their peoples’ access to information. And, to a remarkable degree, they have been successful in doing so. Until now. Iran’s lesson for China’s leaders is that the technologies of censorship, despite their increasing…
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California scholastic press freedom: A work in progress
Monday, June 22, 2009
Plan set to stem censorship of California scholastic press By Donal Brown
Although California has some of the strongest laws in the country protecting the free speech and press rights of public school students, the Golden State also leads the country in student journalists’ complaints about administrative censorship. Now efforts are underway to translate the state’s legislative gains into greater editorial freedom and independence in school newspapers’ day-to-day operations. The nonprofit Student Press Law Center (SPLC) in Washington, D.C. and the California Newspaper Publishers Association (CNPA) are collaborating to…
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China Censorship
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE US Urged to Begin Trade Action Over China Directive to Install Censorship Program in all PCs
Washington, DC--- The California First Amendment Coalition today called for the Obama Administration to initiate an international trade action against the Government of China unless China withdraws its newly imposed requirement to have censorship software installed on all personal computers sold in China. The requirement that special censorship software be “pre-installed” on computers sold in China, reported originally by the Wall Street Journal, is due to take effect by July 1. The…
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Database lawsuit settled
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: CFAC AND MAPLIGHT WIN PUBLIC ACCESS TO CALIFORNIA DATABASE OF LAWMAKERS’ VOTES BERKELEY, CA, June 16 —The California First Amendment Coalition (CFAC) and MAPLight.org, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research organization that shows the connection between money and politics, announce today that they have settled their freedom of information lawsuit against the Office of Legislative Counsel of California, having gained the object of their suit: a machine-readable database of how state lawmakers vote. “It shouldn’t take a lawsuit for the government to realize its data belongs to the people,” said Daniel Newman, MAPLight.org’s…
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Commentary—Secrecy in the courts
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
Secrecy in the courts: How to get judges, lawyers and Sharon Stone to follow the rules? By Peter Scheer With one unforgettable gesture--the uncrossing and crossing of her legs—actress Sharon Stone famously demonstrated that, physically speaking, she has nothing to hide. Her legal affairs, however, are another matter. Despite court rules mandating openness in judicial proceedings, Stone was recently allowed to file a suit in Los Angeles Superior Court under conditions of secrecy so strict they would make the CIA blush. According to the Los Angles Times,…
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CFAC News—Las Vegas Sun
Monday, May 04, 2009
Las Vegas Sun series on construction deaths wins CFAC Sunlight award
By Donal Brown
The California First Amendment Coalition today announced that the 2009 Sunlight Award has been given to reporter Alexandra Berzon and the Las Vegas Sun for an investigative series of 50 articles on the high rate of accidental deaths among construction workers at a huge casino construction site on the Las Vegas strip. The Sunlight Award, given jointly by CFAC and the Associated Press, recognizes journalistic excellence in news coverage that uses government records obtained through the assertion of freedom…
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Commentary—Information wants to be free
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Information wants to be free, but the creators of information need to eat. Whether to charge for journalism online is fundamentally a question about legal rights. By Peter Scheer A debate rages in what remains of the newspaper industry over the question of whether papers should charge for their content online or, as most papers now do, give it away for free in hopes of reaping faster overall revenue growth through internet advertising. As more and more publications contemplate their own obituaries, they are taking another look at the option of charging readers--whether through subscriptions or…
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Opinion
Friday, April 10, 2009
Newspaper finance crisis: Nonprofit model no panacea but may be part of the answer By Donal Brown Like the economy generally, the newspaper industry’s financial crisis deepens daily with reports of bankruptcies, layoffs and closings. The prospect that this downward spiral could leave the country, or large parts of it, without a vigorous press to uncover news of vital interest has fueled interest in alternative business models--notably including the model of nonprofit organizations. At a time when private investment capital is unavailable, the restructuring of newspapers and other media as nonprofits, able to attract…
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News—Attorney General Holder
Friday, April 03, 2009
Attorney General Holder wows open-government advocates with new guidelines pressing federal agencies to release more information Attorney General Eric Holder has been neither slow nor shy about reversing controversial policies of his Republican predecessors. A recent example--particularly auspicious for supporters of government openness--was his issuance of guidelines on the federal Freedom of Information Act. Conspicuously replacing Bush-era guidelines emphasizing agencies’ discretion under FOIA to withhold information, Holder directed government agencies to tilt the scales in favor of making information public. His mechanism for enforcing this policy reversal: Henceforth, Justice Department lawyers may defend a federal agency’s…
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Commentary—To take the sleaze out
Friday, March 06, 2009
To take the sleaze out of judicial elections, ethics rules should bar lawyers who contribute money to judges from practicing before those judges By Peter Scheer In America, a judge ordinarily may not take a “gift” of money from a person or company appearing before him in a legal case. Such a brazen assault on judicial independence is plainly unethical and potentially criminal. Suppose, however, we alter the facts slightly so that the money is offered as a contribution to the judge’s reelection campaign. A nonlawyer would say, wisely, that that is a…
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