Did you know that starting July 1, public agencies can decline to give you hard copy records that are posted online? Or that UNC recently refused to release emails from a faculty member, claiming they were law enforcement records? Did you know that a woman in Asheville agreed to pay $500,000 to settle a lawsuit over something she posted on Facebook? Or that the Supreme Court just struck down a North Carolina law as violating the First Amendment right to participate online?
These are the kinds of things we're going to talk about in a new blog called First for a Reason: Info & Ideas on the First Amendment & Media Law.
We know everything online happens at lightning speed, and (to paraphrase Linda Richman from Coffee Talk) government officials and agencies talk amongst themselves. So what happened two counties over yesterday may happen to you next week. To keep you in the know, we will post FFR a few times a month at https://1stforareason.wordpress.com. (The first post is already there!) And periodically we’ll send emails about particularly relevant topics. Each post or email will be tagged so you can quickly know if it interests you, and we hope you’ll send us questions or topics you'd like us to cover.
Here's to transparent government and robust and free speech in the future. It's more important now than ever!
~ Brought to you by Stevens Martin Vaughn & Tadych