The Postal Service Reform Act of 2022 was signed into law last month. Section 204 of that Act raised the annual cap on the number of copies that a Periodicals publisher can send to non-subscribers at In-County rates from 10 percent to 50 percent of your annual subscriber volume.
On May 18, the Orlando Sentinel obtained documents showing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s staff worked on a proposal that would change the New York Times v. Sullivan defamation standard.
On May 14, a FOIA request revealed that the DOJ secretly subpoenaed a Guardian journalist’s phone records as part of a leak investigation, initiated by President Trump.
On May 19, a New York appeals court dismissed a defamation claim in Kurland v. Glassdoor. Kurland sued Glassdoor based on an anonymous bad review of Kurland’s company on Glassdoor’s website.
On May 18, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported that the Russian legislature is considering a law that would allow Russian law enforcement to revoke the registration and accreditation of media outlets, with no judicial order.
On May 3, Representatives Bill Keating (D-MA) and David Cicilline (D-RI) introduced the International Press Freedom Act of 2022. The Bill would create an Office on International Press Freedom within the State Department, establish an At-Risk Journalists fund, and create a new visa category for threatened journalists.
On May 5, the Radio Television Digital News Association with the Newhouse School at Syracuse University released the first report of a study finding more than one in five TV news directors reported a journalist in their newsroom was attacked in 2021.
On May 3, Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a briefing on the state of world press freedom. During the meeting, he told specific stories of assaults on the press in Russia and Burma.
On May 3, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), Rep. Steve Chabot (R-OH), Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), and other members of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations introduced a bi-partisan resolution in both the House and the Senate condemning threats to freedom of the press around the world and reaffirming the necessity of journalism for a healthy democracy.
On April 28, the Alliance signed on to a letter by the Reporters Committee condemning a Los Angeles Sheriff for threatening a journalist.
