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Donald Trump is at war with the First Amendment and the free press. The war is on full display nearly every day in hisrage-filled press conferenceson the COVID-19 pandemic, in which he regularly condemns the fake news media and bashes reporters who dare to ask the slightest probative questions about his handling of the ongoing public-health crisis.

Trumps war is also longstanding. And it is waged not only on television and inangry tweetsand atcampaign rallies(which have been put on hold because of the coronavirus), but also in courtrooms across the country in the form of defamation lawsuits designed to shame, silence and punish his critics.

The latest victim of the presidents intimidation-by-litigation strategy is TV stationWJFW, an NBC affiliate located in Price County in the rural reaches of northern Wisconsin. On April 13, Trumps principal reelection campaign committeeDonald J. Trump for President, Inc., headquartered in New York Citysued the stationin the countys circuit court. The suit alleges that the station had libeled the campaign and harmed the reputation of the president by airing an anti-Trump attack ad produced by Priorities USA Action, a pro-Democratic Super PAC.

Entitled Exponential Threat, the ad features audio and video clips of Trump downplaying the severity of the virus and disavowing any responsibility for his administrations slow and incompetent response to the virus overlaid against a graph displaying the exponential rise in the number of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. since January.

The lawsuit contends that the ad stitched together Trumps statements about the virus in a false, misleading, deceptive and malicious manner to make it appear that he had called the virus a hoax. According to the complaint, Trump never termed the virus itself a hoax, but instead said at arallyin Charleston, South Carolina, on February 28, that the Democrats were perpetrating a hoax by politicizing his record on the virus.

The lawsuit comes on the heels ofother recent threatsmade by the Trump campaign to take legal action against TV outlets in Florida, Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania for broadcasting the same ad.

The presidents campaign committee has also been busy suing print media. In March, the committeesued the Washington Postfor defamation allegedly arising from opinion columns written by journalistsGreg SargentandPaul Waldmanin June 2019 on the possibility of renewed foreign collusion in the 2020 election. And in February, Trumps 2016 campaign committeesued the New York Times, claiming defamation stemming from an op-ed about Russian collusion written in March 2019 by Max Frankel, who had served as the papers executive editor from 1986-94.

Sadly, the presidents latest round of defamation revenge is part of a pattern that dates back to his formative days as a real-estate developer and publicity-seeking huckster in New York City.

As detailed in a2016 studypublished by the Media Law Resource Center, Trump filed his first major libel suit in 1984, when he took the Chicago Tribune and architecture columnist Paul Gapp to court, claiming that he had sustained $500 million in damages as a result of an article Gapp had written, maligning Trumps plans to build a 150-story skyscraper in lower Manhattan. The case wasdismissedthe following year after the presiding judge determined Gapps article was a constitutionally protected expression of opinion.

The Media Law Resource Center study alsosummarizesTrumps failed defamation lawsuit against writer Timothy OBrien and the Time Warner Book Group, Inc. Now asenior columnist with Bloomberg Opinion, OBrien asserted in a 2005 bookTrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donaldthat Trump wasnt actually a billionaire. OBriens estimate of Trumps net wealth so rankled the future president that he demandeda whopping $5 billion in damages.Like the lawsuit against Gapp, the case was eventuallydismissed.

In addition, thestudychroniclesTrumps case against comedian Bill Maher. Trump targeted Maher in 2013 for a disparaging joke he told on NBCsTonight Show, in which he offered to donate $5 million to charity if Trump could prove he was not the spawn of his mother having sex with an orangutan. After Trump sent a copy of his birth certificate to Maher and the comedian refused to pay up, Trump sued Maher for breach of contract in California. Trump voluntarilywithdrew the caseeight months later, however. Although his then-spokesperson, Michael Cohen,told Politicothat Trump planned to amend and renew the lawsuit, he never did.

Like most of Trumps past defamation forays, the presidents latest round of defamation lawsuits seems destined to crash and burn. The cases will falter for one simple reason: they are utterly devoid of legal merit.

Under the Supreme Courts landmark 1964 ruling inNew York Times Co. v. Sullivan, criticism of public officials is entitled to stringent First Amendment protections. As the great liberal Justice William Brennan wrote for a unanimous court inSullivan, the Constitution embodies our profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks

Public officials, Brennan instructed, must be precluded from recovering damages for allegedly defamatory statements related to official conduct unless they prove that the statements are made with actual malicethat is, that they are made with the knowledge that they are false or with reckless disregard of whether they are true or false.

Insubsequentcases, the Supreme Court extendedSullivans actual malice holding to defamation lawsuits initiated by public figures andbusiness entitiesthat have obtained public-figure status, such as Trumps political campaign committees.

Sullivanis one of the Supreme Courts most consequential decisions, providing the press with the safeguards needed to keep the public informed and hold the rich and powerful to account. Among the courts current members, onlyClarence Thomashas gone on record to suggest thatSullivanbe reconsidered.

Why, then, does the president persist? The answer, it appears, is purely political.

At arally in Fort Worth, Texas, in February 2016, Trump told a throng of cheering red-meat followers, I think the media is among the most dishonest groups of people Ive ever met. Theyre terrible. If I become president, oh, do they have problems. Theyre going to have such problems.

And thenhe added, in a veiled reference toSullivan:

One of the things Im going to do if I win, and I hope we do, and were certainly leading, is Im going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money. Were going to open up those libel laws so that when the New York Times writes a hit piece, which is a total disgrace, or when the Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because theyre totally protected.

As of now, the president is losing his war on the First Amendment and the free press. But as Trumps improbable rise to power confirms, the future remains uncertain. If we have learned anything in the Trump era, it is that our constitutional rights can never be taken for granted.

Bill Blum is a retired judge and a lawyer in Los Angeles. He is a lecturer at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication. He writes regularly on law and politics and is the author of three widely acclaimed legal thrillers:Prejudicial Error,The Last Appeal, andThe Face of Justice.

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Trump keeps escalating his war on the First Amendment and hes losing the fight - Raw Story

Tennessean Opinion Editor David Plazas spoke to Linda Peek Schacht, former Harvard fellow and former Lipscomb University administrator Nashville Tennessean

Journalists work hard to be accurate, trustworthy, and to seek truth and report it truthfully. Facts and good information matter especially when lives are stake.

Students in Jennifer Ducks journalism classes at Belmont University learn how to assess the credibility of information and sources.

Duck also teaches her classes how to debunk myths, which are bountiful on places like social media platforms, where people tend to share links, often without clicking on, reading or vetting them.

The COVID-19 pandemic makes the stakes higher than ever.

This is a matter of life or death, said Duck, an instructor at Belmont in Nashvilleand a Clemson University Ph.D. student. We need truth and we need facts. Journalists help us separate fact from fiction.

Her research focuses on the importance of a free press, which is more important than ever as mixed messages have emerged from government leaders, generally at the national level, about how to handle the novel coronavirus crisis.

Media organizations including The Tennessean and others have striven to separate fact from fiction in daily fact check articles and deep reporting, which seeks to use data, credible sources and science to help inform the public and keep people safe.

So, it is encouraging that Duck urged students to compete in the National Student Essay Competition on the topic of freedom of the press, sponsored by The McCarthy Family Foundation in partnership with The Tennessean, the Committee to Protect Journalists and other U.S. newsrooms.

First Amendment of the US Constitution text, with other Constitution text above(Photo: Getty Images)

Several students, from middle school to college, submitted essays by the April 24 deadline.

They all show a great deal of maturity in wanting to be informed and discerning citizens who defend constitutional freedoms.

Remember: Freedom of the press is one of five freedoms delineated in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits government from enacting laws to abridge it.

Hear more Tennessee Voices:Get the weekly opinion newsletter for insightful and thought provoking columns.

Our founding fathers valued a free press, wrote Frank Runyon, a seventh grader at Richview Middle School in Clarksville. Thomas Jefferson once said,Freedom will be a short-lived possession unless the people are informed. Our founding fathers who believed in democracy thought that freedom of the press was an essential key to our freedom.

Jefferson and other presidents also became angry at the press when journalists were critical, but holding government accountable is why the Founding Fathers wanted to protect a free press.

Tennessee Voices, Episode 22: Linda Peek Schacht on leadership and truth

Tennessee Voices, Episode 11: Shanna Hughey, president of ThinkTennessee

Often, people will lump all journalists as the media, but citizens need to push back against this slight and ask: Which media organization? What did they get wrong (or right)? Is this just a propaganda attempt to discredit the free-flow of information to citizens who deserve to know the truth?

Katie Kuhnash, a senior studying music business at Belmont, reflected in her essay on the importance of being well-informed at a time when Americans are so limited in their ability to spend time with friends, see their families and do commerce because of stay-at-home orders.

In a time where so much is limited, I think it is more important than ever to keep our press free, she wrote. This is also one of the most mysterious, uninformed times we have ever lived through, where being informed is more important than ever.Where being a democracy is more important than ever.

Citizens should search for the truth and be discerning.

But know this: Journalists work hard to be accurate andtrustworthy, and to seek truth and report it truthfully.

We take the First Amendment seriously and are keenly aware that credible information, especially today, is a matter of life and death.

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David Plazas is the director of opinion and engagement for the USA TODAY Network newsrooms in Tennessee and an editorial board member of The Tennessean. Call him at (615) 259-8063, email him atdplazas@tennessean.comor tweet to him at@davidplazas. Subscribe and support local journalism.

Read or Share this story: https://www.tennessean.com/story/opinion/columnists/david-plazas/2020/04/26/coronavirus-era-freedom-press-matter-life-and-death/3008537001/

Read more from the original source:
Why freedom of the press is a matter of life and death in coronavirus era | Plazas - Tennessean

Students in Jennifer Ducks journalism classes at Belmont University learn how to assess the credibility of information and sources.

Duck also teaches her classes how to debunk myths, which are bountiful on places like social media platforms, where people tend to share links, often without clicking on, reading or vetting them.

The COVID-19 pandemic makes the stakes higher than ever.

This is a matter of life or death, said Duck, an instructor at Belmont in Nashville and a Clemson University Ph.D. student. We need truth and we need facts. Journalists help us separate fact from fiction.

Her research focuses on the importance of a free press, which is more important than ever as mixed messages have emerged from government leaders, generally at the national level, about how to handle the novel coronavirus crisis.

Media organizations including The Tennessean and others have striven to separate fact from fiction in daily fact check articles and deep reporting, which seeks to use data, credible sources and science to help inform the public and keep people safe.

So, it is encouraging that Duck urged students to compete in the National Student Essay Competition on the topic of freedom of the press, sponsored by The McCarthy Family Foundation in partnership with The Tennessean, the Committee to Protect Journalists and other U.S. newsrooms.

Several students, from middle school to college, submitted essays by the April 24 deadline.

They all show a great deal of maturity in wanting to be informed and discerning citizens who defend constitutional freedoms.

Remember: Freedom of the press is one of five freedoms delineated in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits government from enacting laws to abridge it.

Our founding fathers valued a free press, wrote Frank Runyon, a seventh grader at Richview Middle School in Clarksville. Thomas Jefferson once said, Freedom will be a short-lived possession unless the people are informed. Our founding fathers who believed in democracy thought that freedom of the press was an essential key to our freedom.

Jefferson and other presidents also became angry at the press when journalists were critical, but holding government accountable is why the Founding Fathers wanted to protect a free press.

Often, people will lump all journalists as the media, but citizens need to push back against this slight and ask: Which media organization? What did they get wrong (or right)? Is this just a propaganda attempt to discredit the free-flow of information to citizens who deserve to know the truth?

Katie Kuhnash, a senior studying music business at Belmont, reflected in her essay on the importance of being well-informed at a time when Americans are so limited in their ability to spend time with friends, see their families and do commerce because of stay-at-home orders.

In a time where so much is limited, I think it is more important than ever to keep our press free, she wrote. This is also one of the most mysterious, uninformed times we have ever lived through, where being informed is more important than ever. Where being a democracy is more important than ever.

Citizens should search for the truth and be discerning.

But know this: Journalists work hard to be accurate and trustworthy, and to seek truth and report it truthfully.

We take the First Amendment seriously and are keenly aware that credible information, especially today, is a matter of life and death.

David Plazas is the director of opinion and engagement for the USA TODAY Network newsrooms in Tennessee and an editorial board member of The Tennessean.

Read more:
Freedom of the press a matter of life and death in COVID-19 era - Columbia Daily Herald

The Hollywood sign is a beloved Southern California landmark. Built in 1923 and donated to the City of Los Angeles in 1944, it sits on public land atop Mt. Lee in Griffith Park.

The sign truly belongs to the public. And yet, in a sleight of hand, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce insists that it owns trademark rights to the signs likeness and therefore can charge for the use of that image.

For years, lawyers for the chamber have been threatening to sue over the use of the Hollywood sign in a variety of projects, from a student film and UCLA law school recruitment brochure to an advertising campaign and tourist photo. British YouTuber Tom Scott mocked the chambers trademark bullying by bleeping out the word Hollywood Sign and pixelating the sign as if it were some X-rated porn star in his video about the sign.

The chamber, which has had control of licensing trademarks for the sign since at least 1992, claims it has certain trademark rights for usage of the Sign or its likeness for commercial purposes. But what most people dont realize is that the chamber tried and failed to register trademarks on the Hollywood sign with two applications to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 2004.

The trademark office rejected the applications because you cant get trademark protection for the the name of a place. The Hollywood sign may be a landmark, but it is also the name of a place. Trademarks are only granted for geographic names in association with specific products and services. The only way that the chamber could have won a trademark for the Hollywood sign is if it had showed that the public widely associated the sign with a specific product. Thats what the owners of Arrowhead Water or California Pizza Kitchen did.

Before the chamber could appeal the trademark offices rejection, the big Hollywood studios Paramount Pictures, CBS Broadcasting, 20th Century Fox, Columbia Pictures and Universal City Studios went ballistic because the chambers applications sought a trademark for the sign as a stage prop. The studios feared that the chamber would demand licensing fees to show the sign in movies and TV shows, according to studio sources. After the studios filed papers with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office seeking more time to file comments, the chamber abandoned its applications.

The chamber, however, was not dissuaded from pushing its right to trademark the word Hollywood. It sought and obtained federal trademarks for the word, using the signs blocky all-caps, staggered lettering.

This time, the chamber followed the requirements for applying for a trademark for a geographical location. It argued that the word HOLLYWOOD had become known to the public as the brand name for candy, food, jewelry, clothing, athletic apparel, paper, licensing of intellectual property, and advertising services after five years of continuous use in the marketplace. The trademark office granted these dubious trademarks.

Those registrations do not apply to an image of the sign itself. But that hasnt stopped the chamber from demanding that filmmakers, television producers and other artists pay licensing fees to show the sign in their works. There is no need to pay. As one scholar explained, these creative works dont violate trademark laws when they simply show the Hollywood sign to signify that the scene took place in Hollywood. Thats called descriptive fair use.

Theres also the First Amendment. The constitutional right to free expression gives the creators of films, television shows, video games, and YouTube videos the right to show the Hollywood sign for artistic reasons or realism without paying a dime. But even when people are within their legal rights to use the image, they pony up when they get a cease-and-desist letter from the chamber demanding money because its cheaper than a lawsuit.

Many courts have reaffirmed a First Amendment protection for expressive works. The most recent decision came down on March 31 from a federal judge in New York. The judge dismissed a trademark lawsuit brought by the maker of Humvees against Activision, the publisher of the Call of Duty video games. He ruled that Activision has a First Amendment right to show the trademarked Humvees, which provide a dose of realism in depicting contemporary warfare.

The Hollywood sign is a historical, geographical and cultural touchstone for Los Angeles. Its not just a billboard for Hollywood. Its an icon that has come to represent dreams made here in California. You shouldnt have to pay a licensing fee for that.

Susan E. Seager is a staff attorney at the UC Irvine Law School Intellectual Property, Arts, and Technology Clinic and Sachli Balazadeh-Nayeri is a law student working in the clinic.

Read more:
Op-Ed: Should anyone own the rights to HOLLYWOOD? - Los Angeles Times

Churches and synagogues were tragically empty two weekends ago, among the holiest days of the year for Americas Christians and Jews. With few exceptions, the nations faithful found solace via computer screens and in solitary prayer, acquiescing to restrictions on their constitutional liberty that would have seemed unthinkable a few months ago.

But many are asking: How long must this go on? America was founded in no small part so that people of every creed and conviction could worship without hindrance, in accordance with conscience and tradition.

Individual churches have been closed for health reasons in the past. History buffs may recall that the first Free Exercise Clause case in Supreme Court history, in 1845, involved the prohibition of open-coffin funeral services in a New Orleans church during a yellow fever outbreak. But this is the first mass closure of churches, synagogues, temples and mosques all over the country. And it has lasted for almost a month.

Other important activities from shopping in hardware stores to voting manage to take place with appropriate safeguards against the spread of the disease. Yet worshipers have been prevented from gathering together (six to 10 feet apart) in cars in the church parking lot; Catholic churches have been told to close their doors even for solitary prayer; traditional sunrise services were canceled even when they would take place in the fresh air, observing the rules of social distancing.

In the early weeks of the crisis, it made sense to enforce sweeping closure rules against all public gatherings no exceptions. And even now, until the crisis subsides, religious communities will have to refrain from activities long central to the expression of love of God and one another. We would know: One of us had to forgo being with family who were sitting shiva, mourning his cousin. The son of the other could not be received into the church on Easter morning. Sacraments cannot be taken by Zoom.

But in the days ahead, religious leaders and public health officials will need to find new ways to deal with the novel conundrums forced on us by this novel coronavirus. Fortunately, these new arrangements can be fashioned with some very old materials: the centuries-old principles of the First Amendment.

Three time-tested principles of the First Amendment stand out as guideposts for navigating the competing demands of religious exercise and public health in a time of contagion.

First, separation of church and state does not give religious communities immunity from regulation that is necessary for the common good. As long ago as 1905, the Supreme Court rejected the religious objections of a Massachusetts pastor to compulsory vaccination against smallpox. Other legal rights, too, are affected. Less than two weeks ago, an appellate court approved restrictions on some abortion procedures during the crisis, saying, When faced with a society-threatening epidemic, a state may implement emergency measures that curtail constitutional rights so long as the measures have at least some real or substantial relation to the public health crisis and are not beyond all question, a plain, palpable invasion of rights secured by the fundamental law.

The second principle is that government can regulate religious activity only through what the Supreme Court calls neutral and generally applicable laws. This means that a government requirement cannot single out religious activity on the ground that it is somehow dispensable or nonessential. The government may regulate religious activities no more strictly than it regulates secular activities that present comparable risks. This principle was invoked by Judge Justin Walker of the Western District of Kentucky when he allowed a drive-in Easter service to take place in a church parking lot with cars six feet apart from one another. Noting that Kentucky permitted drive-through liquor stores to continue operating, the court quipped, if beer is essential, so is Easter. It is not for government officials to decide whether religious worship is essential; the First Amendment already decided that. The question is whether, and how, it may be conducted without undue risk to public health.

Third, both sides must seek what the courts call reasonable accommodations. These are tailored arrangements that allow people to practice their faith to the maximum practicable extent while still minimizing the dangers those activities pose to the public. Sacramental wine was permitted during Prohibition; Quakers are not drafted into the Army; kosher and halal facilities are excused from some of the details of meatpacking regulations.

Reasonable accommodation is the most important principle as we emerge from the first phase of this crisis. Government officials must continue to be vigilant about realistic public health dangers from religious practice, but they must identify less restrictive means for achieving their purposes. For instance, Jewish ritual baths, called mikvahs, are permitted to operate in the tristate area, but are doing so with stricter rules and regulations, including enhanced disinfection and cleaning, and they are visited by appointment only. Similarly, priests in New York City hospitals designated by the Catholic Archdiocese are permitted to enter patients rooms to give communion, so long as they wear all necessary protective equipment. These accommodations require a bit of trust on the part of the government and will need to be verified, potentially with clergy attesting to compliance with certain rules. But such trust is also required when California and Colorado deem marijuana dispensaries essential businesses.

Religious leaders and congregations will have to remember that the First Amendment is not an exemption from law applicable to all. And government officials must not forget that religious exercise is at the apex of our national values. Mass is not a football game, a minyan not a cruise. Worship cannot shelter in place indefinitely.

Michael W. McConnell, a former federal judge, is a law professor and director of the Constitutional Law Center at the Stanford Law School. Max Raskin (@maxraskin) is an adjunct professor of law at New York University.

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If Liquor Stores Are Essential During the Coronavirus Pandemic, Why Isnt Church? - The New York Times