Floyd Abrams Sees Trump’s Anti-Media Tweets as Double-Edged Swords

His Twitter trail could be a gift to lawyers for the news industry during leak investigations into articles that made the president mad enough to pick up his Android and tap, Tap, TAP!

It could provide great grist for legal arguments that the investigations are less about prosecuting damaging leaks than they are about punishing journalists.

.. his new book, “The Soul of the First Amendment,” which he called “really a story of American exceptionalism.” It argues that the United States’ protections for free speech are the best in the world, at least as of now.

.. he helped argue the conservative side of the Citizens United case, which allowed corporations and unions to spend more freely in elections.

.. things have been much worse. There were days when censorship was rampant and real reporting could land you in prison, right here in the United States. For instance, as Mr. Abrams’s book notes, it was not all that atypical when, in 1901, a Chicago court sentenced the managing editor and a reporter at The Chicago American to jail for an article that was critical of one of its decisions.

.. by the second half of the last century, the courts had begun to view “the First Amendment in an expansive and generally highly protective way.” It started with liberal jurists and eventually spread to the conservative jurists as well

.. Gawker, which a Florida jury hit with a $140 million verdict in an invasion-of-privacy lawsuit last year. Without the financial wherewithal to fight on through the appeals process, its owners went into bankruptcy and sold to Univision.

Two Different Perspectives About Bridgewater from The New York Times

For over 40 years, we have pursued meaningful work and meaningful relationships through radical truth and radical transparency. This unique way of operating has obviously worked extremely well. I think it is very important to note that our culture has been conveyed in two notably different ways by The New York Times’ writers and editors. There is a significant discrepancy in the way they portray our culture in their distorted and sensationalized print stories versus the more thoughtful and accurate discussion I had today at their New Work Summit, which focused on celebrating innovative and successful workplace cultures.

.. radical transparency is coming at you.  link

Trump Strategist Stephen Bannon Says Media Should ‘Keep Its Mouth Shut’

Mr. Bannon is one of the strongest forces in an administration with competing power centers. A savvy manipulator of the press, and a proud provocateur, he was among the few advisers in Mr. Trump’s circle who were said to have urged on Mr. Spicer’s confrontational, emotional statement to a shocked West Wing briefing room on Saturday, when the White House disputed news reports about the size of the inauguration crowd. He shares Mr. Trump’s view that the news media misunderstood the movement that the president rode into office.

.. “The elite media got it dead wrong, 100 percent dead wrong,” Mr. Bannon said of the election, calling it “a humiliating defeat that they will never wash away, that will always be there.”

The Pentagon Papers: Secrets, lies and leaks

In this episode of Reveal, we’re using the full hour to take a deep look at the leaking and publication of the Pentagon Papers. At the center of the episode are two guys who have a knack for being in the room when history gets made: Robert J. Rosenthal and Daniel Ellsberg.

.. When Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers to the press in 1971, he was turning his back on a long career close to power, immersed in government secrets. His early career as a nuclear war strategist made him fear that a small conflict could erupt into a nuclear holocaust.