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Lindsey Grayzel and Deia Schlosberg had never met, but on October 11, 2016, the documentary filmmakers were each arrested while filming#Shut It Downclimate activists who turned off all pipelines carrying Canadian tar sands oil into the U.S.as part of a direct action protest.

Though Schlosberg was in North Dakota and Grayzel was in Washington, the two filmmakers quickly found themselves in remarkably similar situations. Along with two other filmmakers, they were arrested and charged with the same felonies as the climate activists, charges carrying penalties of up to 40 years in prison. Since then, their charges have been dropped/suspended and they have joined forces to bring Grayzels feature film, The Reluctant Radical,about Ken Ward, one of the #ShutItDown activists, to fruition.

On April 27, as part of The Portland EcoFilm Festival at the historic Hollywood Theatre, director/producer Grayzel, co-producer Schlosberg, the films subject, Ken Ward, andGrayzels attorney Braden Pence, were on hand to screen works-in-progress clips from The Reluctant Radical, Schlosbergs award-winning short Backyard, and to discuss the essential protection that the First Amendment provides for documentary filmmakers.

In introducing the guests of honor, Dawn Smallman, director of The Portland EcoFilm Festival, said, If they could arrest Lindsey and Deia, they can arrest pretty much every filmmaker we show here at the EcoFilm Festival. This is a huge chilling thing if you work in media, if you work in film and if youre taking on big issues like climate change and the big corporations.

When asked what brought the filmmakers together, Schlosberg, producer of Josh Foxs How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Cant Change,said, Jail. Lindsey and I had never experienced anything like that: being arrested for doing our jobs, charged with felonies for doing our jobs. So we got in touch, discussed legal strategy,confided in each other and realized we were on the same page about a lot of things. After Grayzel sent her a few scenes from The Reluctant Radical, Schlosberg said she was struck by how powerful it is and signed on as co-producer.

Regarding the prosecutors attempt to define press, Pence explained the protections granted under the first amendment:

The most important thing about the freedom of speech and of the press is that the Constitution simply and categorically prohibits the government from limiting the topic at all: Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press . . .This simple language precludes any attempt to limit the definition of what constitutes speech or who constitutes press. Thus, these terms, and the protections associated with them, are necessarily entitled to the broadest possible interpretation.

The second thing to understand is that the freedoms of speech and of the press are inextricably linked to one another, by both the text of the Constitution and by practical necessity: an idea is powerless to affect change when it is whispered alone into the darkness; press is powerless to affect change when it lacks substance. It is at the juncture of speech and press where the promise of the first amendment is found, a place as diverse as the newspaper editorial room, the sidewalk soapbox, and the social media mobile phone app. Thus, we are all members of the press protected by the Constitution, and anyone who wants to exercise the freedom of speech must be willing to fight for the freedom of press.

Following the event, Grayzel shared tips for other filmmakers who plan to film protests and hope to avoid landing themselves in jail. She recommended CMSIs report Dangerous Documentaries: Reducing Risk when Telling Truth to Power. Though, of course, filmmakers need to adjust to the specific circumstances they are anticipating, Grayzel developed the following general best practices for filming protests:

1. Maintain separation of actions between yourself documenting and your subjects protesting. Do not help protests with logistics, help facilitate their actions, give suggestions, etc. Be an observer, not a participant. Avoid sharing transportation with your subjects to the protest site.

2. Identify yourself as media to law enforcement in the field. If practical, wear an identifying media badge, outfit your gear with the name of your film/company/news organization, etc. Have identifying business cards with your gear. Have an internet trail documenting your work on the project, and colleagues who could testify on your behalf that they were aware of your work on the subject.

3. If your camera allows for recording on two cards simultaneously, use it. If things look they are going awry, hand off one of the cards to someone else who is trustworthy and wont be arrested, or hide it somewhere you can come back and retrieve it later.

4. Plan ahead. If there is reason to believe you might be arrested, arrange ahead of time for someone to bail you out, and an attorney who is licensed in the state you are filming in.

5. Dont be intimidated to do your job! You have a right to film on public property. If the police tell you to move, you need to move, but dont move before you are told you have to. Often, they wonttell you to move and then you have a better shot. Heck, the police officer arresting Ken at the Exxon station was downright excited at the prospect of seeing himself on YouTube.

6. Get permission.Make sure the people who are protesting want you to be filming them. If its a public protest, I think we can assume this to be the case, but in other scenarios make sure you have permission from the subjects. Be prepared to fight subpoenas for your raw footage that could be used against your subjects. (Know the shield laws of the state you are working in.)

Meanwhile, as The Reluctant Radical wraps up post-production and prepares to shoot Wards unexpected second trial (after his first ended in a mistrial) the team has turned to Kickstarter to raise money forpost-production needs including final editing, a musical score, post production sound mix, and color correction. Portland-based film composer Mark Orton (Nebraska, Box Trolls) has already signed on to do the score.

Find out more about The Reluctant Radical here.

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Lessons from The Reluctant Radical: How The First Amendment Protects Filmmakers - Filmmaker Magazine

There was plenty of Trump-related news for Stephen Colbert to get to on Tuesday night: the GOPs latest attempt to pass the American Health Care Act, that call with Vladimir Putin (You know things are bad when Putin is the voice of restraint), the rolling back of Michelle Obamas healthy school lunch program. But the biggest news for the Late Show host continued to be the presidents proud dismissal of the Constitutionin this case, the First Amendment.

They want to get rid of the First Amendment? Colbert asked, after playing a tape of Reince Priebus saying the administration was looking at changing national libel laws. Stop the presses! Seriously: Stop the presses. In fact, the Late Show exclusively revealed a draft of the administrations proposed change, and it was, lets say, quite Trumpian:

Read the rest here:
Stephen Colbert Previews Trump's Proposed Changes to the First Amendment - Slate Magazine (blog)

McKesson files motion to vacate Judge Griffen's temporary restraining order, dismiss case

Michael Buckner, KTHV 3:35 PM. CDT May 03, 2017

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (KTHV) - After the Arkansas House of Representatives passed a resolution allowing for legislators to consider an impeachment, Judge Wendell Griffenhas responded to what he says is an effort to impeach him.

The resolution was introduced Tuesday and was passed on Wednesday changed the House rules to consider impeachments. State Senator Trent Garner (R-El Dorado) has called Griffen'sruling on the McKesson case and his subsequent appearance outside the Governor's Mansion a "mockery of our judicial process." Garner thinks the judge should be removed from his duties due to what he calls "gross misconduct."

In response, Griffenwrote a post on his personal blog on the passing of the resolution to change House rules which he alleges is in relation to him. He began his post by quoting Frederick Douglass, a famous black abolitionist. The quote reads, "There is no Negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough to live up to their own Constitution."

"Now, as when Douglass made that statement," Griffen said, "there appears to be a huge gap between what some politicians claim to believe about freedom and their conduct."

Throughout the blog post, Griffenasserted that his critics are attacking his First Amendment right which gives citizens the right to free speech, freedom to express their religion, and the right to peacefully assemble. He claimed Arkansas legislators and other politicians are "outraged" because he decided to express his First Amendment rights at a Good Friday prayer vigil the same day he granted a temporary restraining order on the use of one execution drug.

"The First Amendment guarantees my freedom to be a follower of Jesus, whether politicians like how I follow Jesus or not," Griffen said. "The First Amendment guarantees my freedom to assemble peaceably with other persons, whether politicians approve of what I think."

Griffen said his critics took an oath to uphold and support the United States Constitution and that their actions should emulate the oath they took.

"We have no right to use our offices to punish or threaten people for exercising their right to disagree with us," Griffen said.

The Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission are currently investigating Griffen's conduct from April 14 to see if violated the Code of Judicial Conduct.

Griffen then filed his own ethic complaint against Attorney General Leslie Rutledge and Arkansas Supreme Court. He said neither the court nor Rutledge gave him an opportunity to respond to the effort to disqualify him. The commission will look into that complaint at the same time as they look into Griffen's conduct.

House Speaker Jeremy Gilliam during the passing of the resolution said there aren't any plans to impeach Griffen. During the debate, several legislators disagreed strongly with the change. State Representative Vivian Flowers (D-Pine Bluff) said the commission investigating Griffen already has the authority to discipline him.

To read Griffen's full blog post, click here.

2017 KTHV-TV

KTHV

Sen. Garner calls for impeachment of Judge Griffen, House votes to amend rules

KTHV

Judge Griffen files ethic complaint against AG Leslie Rutledge, Ark. Supreme Court

KTHV

State of Arkansas asks court to remove Judge Griffen from restraining order case

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Judge Griffen says critics, politicians are attacking his First Amendment rights - THV 11

White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus has revealed that President Trump is considering amending or even abolishing the First Amendment over claims of fake news by the mainstream media.

Lets look at this closely: yes, some mainstream news is exaggerated to get more viewers and misinformation can slip through, but to even think about changing the First Amendment is a dangerous idea.

Trump has already been mass-tweeting about certain publications that criticize him, including the New York Times and The Washington Post, but this is beyond firing back at media coverage: this is taking away the right to free speech and the right to a free press.

The Trump cabinet is always doing interviews like this, bringing up fake news as if its a recurring issue. Most news organizations do work hard to put out quality (and factual) stories; its the criticism that Trump cant stand, and why this is even being discussed.

In answering a question about whether Trump would actually go about changing the libel laws, Priebus responded, I think its something that weve looked at. How that gets executed or whether that goes anywhere is a different story.

This is alarming, especially when the entirely of the Trump cabinet have repeated these talking points about fake news over and over again. They are trying their hardest to spread a message that the news can no longer be trusted.

Follow this link:
SHOCK: Trump Considering 1st Amendment Clampdown | HuffPost - Huffington Post

Lincoln Caplan, Joel Simon, Nicholas Lemann, Michael Oreskes, and Emily Bell. Photo: Meritxell Roca.

The internet in its halcyon days was lauded as a open space that could promote free speech in the US and worldwide, but it is now a realm that has settled into domination by a few companies. As we enter an age in which the internet is fully integrated into our daily lives, the main channel by which we access information, a reconsideration of the values of the First Amendment is required.

This was the motivation for a symposium on May 1 at Columbia University called Disrupted: Speech and Democracy in the Digital Age. Attended by a mix of legal professionals, academics, and journalists, the message was clear: Legal thinking around the First Amendment must renew itself in the new era. The internet is deeply affecting the shape of public discourse. In turn, how can the values of freedom of expression, freedom of the press, and freedom of assembly shape and govern the digital space?

This was the first public event hosted by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University (the Tow Center for Digital Journalism was co-sponsor). The Institutewill surely be at the center of this debate for years to come. The First Amendment Institute, now up and running after its inception last year under founding director Jameel Jaffer, will be dedicated to research, education, and litigation pursuing freedom of speech.

Law, by nature, is always catching up to technology. Leslie Kendrick, professor of law at University of Virginia, made the distinction between east coast code and west coast codeeast coast code being the codified legal precepts, and west coast code being, well, all those lines written in computer language. East coast code, she said, is always behind west coast code; west coast code moves fast and is always inventing things the law cannot anticipate.

Legal efforts on behalf of the First Amendment have traditionally focused on the right to say thingsthe right to hand out pamphlets, as Tim Wu, professor of law at Columbia and contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, put it. But almost everyone on stage yesterday agreed that, with the internet, the right to say things is no longer under threat. Instead, there are a host of other threats enabled by the advent of the internet.

Now that anyone can publish freely online, one threat to free speech comes from the ability of companies or social media platforms to control who gets heard; how many readers newspapers reach; and which citizens have a voice in a cluttered online environment of bots and ads. Zeynep Tufekci, writer for the Times and professor of communications at University of North Carolina, wondered whether Twitter users leaving the platform because of harassment might be having their freedom of assembly violated. She also warned of new censorship techniques, in use now in China, which drown out anti-government speech rather than the traditional method of silencing. Teams of social media users linked to government agents pump out celebrity controversies, Tufekci said, at the same time other users are trying to raise the profile of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Such censorship techniques take advantage of the fact that all of us have limited attention. And, as Wu has written extensively on, the entire internet is built so that our attention is the currency. Facebook, in particular, makes money off of being able to keep you on their platform, clicking. And theyve become immensely good at targeting content to you. The data they have on individuals is unprecedented: no longer demographic, but individual and granular. New litigation around the First Amendment must pay attention to this market.

Another threat to freedom of the press is the breakdown of economic models. As Nicholas Lemann, formerly dean of the Journalism School at Columbia, put it, the big story in journalism now is not Trump, but the massive loss of jobs suffered in the past few years. Michael Oreskes, senior vice president and editorial director of NPR (and a CJR board member), emphasized that the greatest loss has been in local papers: Many city halls around the country are no longer covered. While the internet has been very good in making information available globally, local news has suffered because it does not have this universal appeal.

Addressing such questionsthe economic downfall of journalism, the new attention market, a new type of censorshipwill require a more imaginative view of the (quite brief) First Amendment, said Jamal Greene, professor of law at Columbia. Consider, he mused, if we passed a law limiting the number of people you could follow on Twitter to 50. In one sense, such a law would in conflict with the First Amendmentbut in other ways, such a move might promote discussion and deliberation. How we will negotiate such cases will be the work of the coming generation.

The bottom line is that Twitter and Facebook are private companies that have become our primary sites for public discourse. The function of journalismand indeed, the function of democracydepends on upholding the First Amendment to preserve the public sphere.

Watch the full event stream here.

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Legal thinking around First Amendment must evolve in digital age - Columbia Journalism Review