REPORTERS COMMITTEE FOR FREEDOM OF THE PRESS

The Reporters Committee fully intends to maintain the growth and emphasis in our core areas of work. We aim to stand as the indispensable and widely recognized pro bono legal partner for journalists through our litigation, amicus, and pre-publication review practices. We are also continuing to build out and sustain RCFP’s support across the country for journalists through the Local Legal Initiative, ProJourn, the Racial Equity in Journalism Legal Fellow, and the Free Expression Legal Network (“FELN”) of law school clinics engaged in First Amendment and media law (which we co-direct with Yale Law School’s MFIA clinic). And our trainings and public education outreach to newsrooms, law schools, and journalists remain a strong area of emphasis, as we work to ensure that the next generation of reporters and lawyers has a full understanding of our First Amendment freedom of the press.

Building on our core areas of strength, we see several priorities for 2023: 1) expanding legal support for local journalists and 2) combating disinformation by pursuing pivotal access cases and protective newsgathering policies to help reporters keep government accountable. Defending reporter-source confidentiality and opening up government information to journalists are two of the best ways to reverse the effects of misinformation in our public square – and the Reporters Committee does more of this work than any legal services nonprofit in the country.

Expanding Local Support for Journalists

National legal and policy battles generate a great deal of attention and deserved organizational energy. But we know that journalists in smaller markets face severe legal challenges in covering local and state governments and other institutions whose actions affect the daily lives of millions of people and the strength of our democracy.

In small media markets, print and broadcast media typically have fewer pro bono resources to stand up for their rights, in terms of public access to records, meetings, and policymaking. And there is a growing culture of secrecy in state and local government, often coupled with the harmful impact of misinformation campaigns targeting audiences on the basis of race, religion, and political divisions.

For the past two years, the Reporters Committee has developed two complementary models of supporting local journalists. First, our Local Legal Initiative has placed staff attorneys in five states (to date, Oregon, Oklahoma, Colorado, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania) who provide full-time pro bono legal services to local media and documentary filmmakers in public access, public records, litigation, and related matters. Frequently, the LLI attorneys hear of cases of journalists in need through our free national hotline. They work full-time to help local journalists and news organizations in their respective states defend their rights to gather and report the news, gain access to public records and court proceedings, and hold state and local government agencies and officials accountable to voters.

That model is one way through which the Reporters Committee is supporting local journalists. In 2023, we will face expansion decisions and opportunities. In addition to supporting the current LLI program with legal, communications, and fundraising services, we are considering expansion in the Midwest and other regions of the country where legal resources for local media are sparse.

Second, we have expanded ProJourn, a referral service at RCFP providing small news organizations, nonprofit newsrooms, documentary filmmakers, and freelancers with no-cost legal help for pre-publication review and public records access. The initiative was piloted in Washington and California in 2020 and 2021 by Microsoft and the law firm Davis Wright Tremaine LLP and is now operated by the Reporters Committee. Under this scaling model, ProJourn brings together seasoned media attorneys and corporate in-house counsel to increase legal support capacity and meet the growing needs of local journalists. In October 2022, ProJourn announced a substantial expansion into Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, and New York. We hope to grow ProJourn into a network of law firms and corporate legal departments that handles up to 300 matters each year by the end of 2024, with an estimated annual value of $3.5 million in pro bono services.

Tthe Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press achieved substantial growth in 2022 in our key areas of work, providing free and high-quality legal support for news media in the United States.

In the past several years, our staffing has grown to 25 attorneys and more than 35 total staff members including RCFP Local Legal Initiative attorneys in five states, and “ProJourn,” a pro bono partnership with Microsoft and the law firm Davis Wright Tremaine to provide free legal services for members of the media across the nation. All of this is in addition to our national legal work and our policy engagement on preserving press freedom with the Department of Justice and another key decision makers.

The organization’s annual budget is now over $6 million, and the communications, fundraising, financial, and other support staffing has increased to meet the programming needs.

RCFP was founded in 1970 at a time when the nation’s news media faced a wave of government subpoenas asking reporters to name confidential sources. Prominent journalists formed a committee that initially operated part-time but soon grew to include full-time staff and attorneys donating their services. It wasn’t long before RCFP launched a legal hotline, the first of its kind to offer 24/7 legal guidance to journalists involved in First Amendment and freedom of information issues, as well as the first magazine devoted to reporting media law developments.

RCFP was a plaintiff in several lawsuits in its early years, including suits for access to White House documents and tapes held by former President Nixon, for former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s official telephone transcripts, and for FBI arrest records under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). We also started submitting amicus briefs in the 1970s and now file more than 30 briefs annually in state and federal courts around the country. We have played an amicus role in virtually every significant press freedom case that has come before the U.S. Supreme Court over the last five decades.

In 2014, RCFP launched a direct litigation practice, representing reporters and news organizations in both needs-based and impact litigation matters, as well as filing lawsuits on its own behalf. In just a few years, this practice has grown from handling just a few matters each year to a docket in the fall of 2018 that included more than 20 active litigation matters. The impact of our litigation over the past few years has been substantial and we are improving access to information for reporters and building a stronger body of case law.

Since the mid-1980s, RCFP has also published comprehensive guides for reporters, including a 50-state compendium of open government laws and a First Amendment Handbook, providing basic information about media law for newsrooms. After the September 11 attacks, RCFP became a leading expert on efforts to prevent important information from reaching the public and our “Homefront Confidential” reports and “Behind the Homefront” blog provided authoritative summaries of what happened to the public’s right to know in the post-9/11 world.

Today, RCFP provides litigation support to dozens of journalists and documentarians annually, and RCFP attorneys regularly speak on legal issues and provide in-person trainings to hundreds of journalists each year. We will continue to grow our legal practice by prioritizing local newsroom engagement and relationship building to identify more specifically the needs of journalists we seek to serve. We’re also committed to a more inclusive and equitable workplace and are actively working to improve our internal policies and external presence to match that goal.