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Tag: New York Times v. Sullivan

Budget, staff cuts pose the main threat to our free press

Budget, staff cuts pose the main threat to our free press

BOSTON — Newsrooms are slashing budgets and shedding reporters, posing an even greater threat to the free press than the president’s near-daily attacks on the media, ProPublica Editor-in-Chief Stephen Engelberg told the New England First Amendment Coalition. “In 1998 there were more than 400,000 people employed by newspapers across the country,” Engelberg said. “Today, we’re at 140,000 and dropping.” Engelberg received the 2019 Stephen Hamblett First Amendment Award at the annual NEFAC awards luncheon in Boston on Feb. 15. Named…

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Moguls and the media

Moguls and the media

David  A. Logan, professor of law and former dean of the RWU School of Law, who has studied and written extensively about First Amendment issues: Among President-elect Donald Trump’s many ill-informed campaign statements was that he was “going to open up libel laws.” Where to begin? First, libel law was, and remains, state law. Second, while federal legislation does impact pockets of libel law (most notably, the Communications Decency Act protects websites from liability for merely hosting defamatory statements posted by…

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