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After 40 years on the job, the Minnesota News Council is closing down. Council President Tony Carideo has said public complaints are down and so is corporate support for the independent news-review operation. Carideo noted that e-mail and Twitter now ...

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Let’s begin 2011 on a hopeful note: Texas A&M University officials say they will revisit a recent decision that would have banned journalism instructors from directing students in filing open-records requests about — of all things — Texas A&M policies ...

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Welcome, 2011, and all that you offer as a New Year: a chance for a fresh start and the promise of new opportunities. But it’s fair to say that in terms of the First Amendment, you’re going to look a ...

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Former ABC “Nightline” host Ted Koppel and MSNBC host and pundit Keith Olbermann recently exchanged sharply opposing views about the state of the news business — as they know it. Kicking off the high-level spat, Koppel used a guest column ...

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Do you recall that ironic twist on an old saying that goes like this: “No good deed goes unpunished?” In its broadest sense, that adage recognizes the reality that bad things can result from even the most well-intentioned actions and ...

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OK, so at some disputed level, neither candidate for the U.S. Senate in Delaware recently stood out in terms of basic knowledge of what the First Amendment actually says. Then there are the results a few weeks ago from another ...

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While the emergence of tea party candidates is getting headlines in this fall’s midterm elections, another trend with free-speech implications has popped up, as well — candidates and supporters going to court, not just the ballot box, to challenge opponents’ ...

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There’s no summer slowdown when it comes to First Amendment issues. From a judge willing — if only for a time — to throw “80 years of First Amendment jurisprudence on its head” with her court order, to a congressional ...

Sometimes the meaning of the 45 words of the First Amendment seems to escape even those trained in the law. In Pennsylvania last week, two judges in Centre County — home to Penn State University — signed off on what ...

Licensing journalists is an idea that surfaces from time to time. But it’s always a bad idea. Such proposals may originate from grudges held by lawmakers, or a political strategy to typecast journalists as biased and out of touch, or ...