Governmental interference with news

The U.S. Department of Labor began implementing parts of its new, slightly more-friendly media policy regarding journalists' access to embargoed job statistics. In response to publicized media concerns, the policy, which takes full effect on Sept. 5, gives credentialed reporters the option of using their own department-approved newsgathering equipment during the "lock-ups."

News media executives and free press advocates expressed concern today at a House congressional committee regarding the U.S. Department of Labor’s proposal to require journalists to use government-owned equipment when reporting newly released government job statistics.

The U.S. Department of Labor issued stricter procedures last week for media organizations participating in the department-named "press lock-ups," which allows selected reporters a 30-minute window in a highly-controlled environment to preview economic data before the information is made public.

With anecdotes of bureaucratically tangled interview requests, scripted and chaperoned sources, stalled federal Freedom of Information Act responses and politicized press offices, a panel of health and science journalists speaking at the National Press Club Monday said that many of the government agencies they rely on have failed to live up to the Obama administration's sweeping transparency promises.

In an Department of Defense memo sent last week to officials and the news media, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Douglas B. Wilson reaffirmed the Pentagon’s effort to curb the flow of leaked or otherwise unauthorized information to the news media.

The Supreme Court will decide next term whether the First Amendment applies to recordings and pictures that depict animal cruelty.

But the implications of the case go well beyond the issue of animal cruelty. The Court may also revisit two fundamental issues of First Amendment law – how easily the government may categorically ban entire categories of speech, and when a law may be struck down as “overbroad” because it has a chilling effect on protected speech.

The Department of Veterans Affairs finally returned a sound card to WAMU radio reporter David Schultz last week after illegally confiscating it at a VA-hosted public meeting. But the public radio station is still "very concerned" about the VA's suggestions to the media that Schultz did not properly identify himself as a reporter at the event, according to a

The Department of Veterans Affairs returned an audio recording to a Washington, D.C., public radio station on Friday, three days after the equipment was illegally confiscated from a reporter at a local public forum on minority veterans issues.

A Washington D.C.-based radio reporter says his audio storage device was inappropriately confiscated Tuesday by Veterans Affairs officials after he interviewed a patient at a VA Medical Center forum.

VA officials claim they intervened after the reporter "took advantage" of the patient, who was undergoing medical treatment.