Law

The Universities of Wisconsin System is trying to steal faculty’s copyright rights to educational material. Please help fight this stupid power grab.

(The system says, “We would never look to diminish your rights or take your hard-earned work away from you.” What the system actually does is more accurately depicted in the scene above.)

THE SHORT, SHORT VERSION: The Universities of Wisconsin System is trying to rewrite its copyright policy and assign itself the rights to the educational work and scholarly materials faculty create. If this goes through, faculty who have spent years building and improving their courses could get the shaft and I have no idea if I’ll be able to share stuff that I’ve always shared with you.

If you think this is as stupid as I do, please email system President Jay Rothman at president@wisconsin.edu and tell him not to let this policy pass.

 

THE LONGER, MORE NUANCED VERSION: Here’s a deep dive on the way the system is trying to recreate its copyright policy in a way that disenfranchises its faculty:

THE LEAD: The Universities of Wisconsin has decided to rewrite its rules involving intellectual property, giving the system total ownership over pretty much everything faculty create:

The UW System is proposing a new copyright policy that professors say would eliminate faculty ownership of instructional materials. The revisions are stoking alarm among professors statewide who say such a move would cheapen higher education into a mass-produced commodity.

“This policy change is nothing less than a drastic redefinition of the employment contract, one that represents a massive seizing of our intellectual property on a grand scale,” professors from nine of the 13 UW campuses wrote in a recent letter to UW System President Jay Rothman. “It would allow any UW campuses to fire any employee and nonetheless continue teaching their courses in perpetuity with no obligation to continue paying the employee for their work.”

Aside from owning faculty syllabi, lecture notes and exam materials, UW would also have ownership rights over the scholarship faculty create:

A draft of the new policy, obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, would eliminate existing copyright language and replace it with the assertion that UW System holds ownership of both “institutional work” and “scholarly work.”

<SNIP>

“Scholarly work” includes most of what professors produce, such as lecture notes, course materials, journal articles and books. The UW System transfers copyright ownership to the author, as is customary in higher education, but notes that it “reserves” the right to use the works for purposes “consistent with its educational mission and academic norms.”

 

DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE: Given that I’ve got about a dozen textbooks in the field, I edit a journal that needs scholarly work to keep it running, I spent seven years crafting hundreds of blog posts and that I’ve built a ton of courses over my nearly 30 years of teaching, this was basically my calm, metered reaction:

beaker from the muppet show is screaming with the words time to freakout above him

I’ve already sent a copy of the proposal to Sage for its team of lawyers to go over, so I’m hopeful that I receive an answer along the lines of, “Calm down… Have a Diet Coke… This isn’t going to destroy what you’ve spent decades creating…”

In the meantime, let’s lay out how stupid and problematic this is:

The quality of your courses depend on the people you’re pissing off:  We essentially went through this in my media-writing class today and a collection of sophomores and juniors understood it, so I’m hoping it might make sense to the Board of Regents.

I proposed the following scenario to one kid in the class: Let’s say you turned in a really good story as an assignment for this class. In fact, I thought it was so good, I took your name off of it, put my name on it and submitted it to the local paper. The paper then paid me $50 for the story.

I then asked the kid, “So, given that every time you turn in something good, I’m going to take it, put my name on it and make money from it, how likely are you to put forth your best effort in this class?”

The kid said, “There’s no way I’m going to do anything good for you anymore.”

Right. So, let’s play that out here: If every time I work REALLY hard on making good stuff for my class, the U is just going to claim it as its own, why would I bother to do anything more than the bare minimum to make my class work?

I guess you could make the argument that pride in our work and a desire to make things better for our students could inspire us to do great things, even in the face of a naked power grab by the system, but if you’re going to treat us like mercenaries, we’re going to behave that way.

This will stifle innovation, limit interest in developing new courses and create a general sense of animosity among faculty. It will also likely inspire professors to find new ways to hide stuff from the administration folks, as one person on social media suggested to me:

This stuff isn’t a product, but rather a process: Inherent to the system’s argument is the basic premise of work product: You built this stuff while you were employed by us and required to do so. Therefore, since we paid you for this, the stuff is ours.

That works in the private sector, where we’re tasked with specific outcomes and granted special provisions to create this kind of work product. For example, I know that when I worked at the Wisconsin State Journal, I wrote a lot of articles that the paper published. Implicit in my employment agreement was the premise that I was acting on behalf of the paper, writing things that the paper tasked me to write and publishing those things in a copyrighted publication. They own that stuff and I’m cool with that. I don’t think I’m ever going to want to republish a weather story I wrote in 1996, and if I did something cool I wanted to show my students, that’s acceptable use.

However, when it comes to my media-writing class, I didn’t get hired to write lecture notes and syllabi for that class. In fact, what I wrote was a tweaked version of something I’d been working on for decades. I’d drafted some of this conceptual stuff when I was working at UW-Madison, improved upon it when I was at Mizzou, reconfigured it at Ball State and then adapted it here. This isn’t like you hired me to bake a cake for your birthday. This is a tree I’ve been growing and tending for years and years.

 

The material might not be UW’s to steal: Even if you don’t buy the argument above, the instructors might not own the material they’re using in the first place.

Textbook publishers aren’t just sending out desk copies of a dead-tree books and telling fledgling professors, “Vaya con Dios.” They actually build a ton of back-end stuff into the educational packages they provide these days, which includes a lot of the stuff the system is trying to get its grubby little paws on.

I know for my books at Sage, we have sample syllabi, PowerPoint slides for lectures, notes for instructors, exercises and test banks crammed with questions. I might even be forgetting some of the stuff we provide.

(Shameless Plug: Sage really is amazing when it comes to this kind of stuff. If you ever need a book, check these folks out first, especially if you need some help with the shaping and molding of the entire class experience.)

These things are available to instructors because Sage built them to go along with the authors’ textbooks. The professors can use them as they are, add stuff, cut stuff or otherwise tweak what they receive. That said, it’s not theirs to sell or give away. Sage holds the copyright for this stuff and I imagine Sage and the other book publishers who pour a ton of time and resources into building these things would be more than a bit peeved if the UW System tried to claim it as its own.

 

The Coy and Vance Duke Theory of Education: When I was a kid, I loved “The Dukes of Hazzard” television show, which ran every Friday for about seven or eight years. The show involved two cousins, Bo and Luke Duke, getting into scrapes with the corrupt law enforcement of Hazzard County and doing amazing car chases in their 1969 Dodge Charger. Along with patriarch Uncle Jesse Duke and the lovely cousin Daisy Duke, the boys were “makin’ their way, the only way they know how,” to quote the theme song.

It was a simple show that drew a good audience and it seemed to work well. However, around the fifth season, John Schneider and Tom Wopat (who played Bo and Luke, respectively) got into a contract dispute with the studio over salaries. Rather than pay them and move on with life, the studio had the idea in its head that the car (the General Lee) was actually the star of the show, so it didn’t matter who was driving it and that they didn’t need these two pretty boys at all.

Enter new cousins: Coy and Vance Duke.

If ever there was a knock-off of a brand name, this was it. Like the original Duke Boys, one was blonde, one was brunette. They essentially wore the same wardrobe, had the same catch phrases and did the same insane driving stuff. That said, the ratings took a dump and after one season, Bo and Luke “returned from driving the NASCAR circuit” and Coy and Vance ended up fading from memory.

What the universities are doing here is essentially the same kind of thing. They figure, “Well, hell, if we have the notes, the syllabus and the PowerPoint slides, we don’t really need the professor who created them at the front of the room.” These folks assume that once we decide to leave, retire or whatever, they can just plug in an adjunct at a fraction of the cost and things will run like a Swiss watch.  And that’s not just me being paranoid, as other folks see it as well:

I pretty much know my notes aren’t going to be helpful to other people as I wrote them based on a lot of my experiences in the field. Notes like (BUS FIRE STORY GOES HERE) or (EXPLAIN DRUG DEALER SHOT THING) probably won’t work for a random Coy or Vance they bring in to teach my class after they decide they don’t need me anymore.

 

HERE’S WHY YOU SHOULD CARE (AND WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT): One of the biggest reasons I’m worried about this is because it impacts what I can do with my materials. That’s also the main reason why I think you should care about it, too.

I never took this job to get rich and I certainly don’t like the idea of coming across like Daffy Duck when he found the treasure room:

However, when I know stuff is mine to do with as I please, that tends to benefit a lot of other people as well. Whenever someone shoots me an email and says, “Hey, how do you organize your class?” I’m always happy to give them a copy of my syllabus. When someone needs an assignment I’ve built, I’m glad to share it with them or on the blog.

When we went into COVID lock down, I basically dumped everything I ever did that I thought would help people into the Corona Hotline section of the blog for free. All those goodies remain there to this day, so feel free to help yourself.

If this policy passes, I might not be as free to offer that kind of generosity any more, and that would really tick me off.

So, here’s how you can help me remain capable of helping you. The university system has extended comments on this until Dec. 13. If you are part of the UW system, you can use this link for sure to register your thoughts. (Not sure if it works for those of you elsewhere.)

If you can’t use that link, here is another option:

This is Jay Rothman, the president of the Universities of Wisconsin system. Feel free to call him at the number above or email him at president@wisconsin.edu and tell him to leave the copyright in the hands of the professors, instructors and students.

I appreciate the help and I’m sure my colleagues throughout the system do as well.

 

Indiana’s incoming Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith threatens a student newspaper for telling its readers what people who worked with Donald Trump said about Donald Trump

(I don’t think Indiana Lieutenant Governor-elect and far-right pastor Micah Beckwith understands how the First Amendment works. I could teach him, but I’d have to charge…)

THE LEAD: Shortly after being elected as Indiana’s next lieutenant governor, Micah Beckwith decided to take his newfound power out for a test drive by threatening the Indiana Daily Student newspaper with censorship:

WHO IS THIS GUY? Beckwith is a 42-year-old, hard-right Republican, who has never held any political office prior to winning the lieutenant governor position. He came in third in 2020 while running for a U.S. house seat in Indiana. He graduated from Huntington University, a private college affiliated with the Church of the United Brethren in Christ.

After graduating with a business/economics degree in 2005, he worked for two years with EmbroidMe and two more as a “Co-Owner” of an LLC. After that, he found his calling as a pastor for the White River Christian Church. After five years there, Beckwith took a gig as a pastor at Northview Church in 2014. Critics deemed him a “white Christian nationalist,” who has compared vaccines to rape, opposes all LGBTQ issues and has engaged in book banning. He also runs a podcast called “Jesus, Sex and Politics.”

While campaigning, he threatened to fire any state employee who works with his office who uses pronouns in their email signatures, something Beckwith gamely tried to walk back later. Beckwith also referred to his Democrat opponents as evoking the “Jezebel spirit,” a sexist and racist term that reaches back to the Jim Crow South.

In short, an overall fun guy…

 

A QUICK BREAKDOWN: Here’s a quick look of how this situation is dumber than a bucketful of hair:

First, the students did not call Donald Trump these things. They literally QUOTED people who WORKED WITH TRUMP on the cover of the paper to make a point. If he looked at the people who said this stuff, I have a hard time believing Beckwith could get away with calling ANY of them “woke.”

Even more, people who are more politically aligned with Beckwith are pointing out on X how he completely misread this situation:

Screenshot

(Let’s also sidestep the whole “this is what your taxes are paying for” thing, as a) they are not, b) even if they were, financing a free press isn’t a bad thing and c) there are far dumber things tax money goes toward…)

Finally, the First Amendment guarantees the right to a free press, unfettered by the whims of governmental figures. Punishment for free speech of this kind is not allowed in this country (whether we’re truly a “democracy” or not). It’s unclear how Beckwith will “stop it for them” but I doubt it would be legal.

 

COMMENTS ON THE SITUATION: I reached out to co-EICs Marissa Meador and Jacob Spudich for a comment on the controversy and they were nice enough to respond:

“While we welcome criticism of our newspaper and its content, we are staunch defenders of the First Amendment and the freedom it grants to the press — including student journalism. Our front page clearly attributes the quotes to former allies of Donald Trump, which we collected from several articles across the New York Times and CNN. Beckwith’s statement implying he will attempt to control or suppress what we publish is deeply concerning, not just for staffers at the Indiana Daily Student but for our constitutional principles overall.”

I messaged Beckwith’s office with several questions and a request for comment. I received nothing to this point, but if I do I’ll post it here. (Don’t hold your breath on this one…)

Still, my favorite response of all of this came from the admin at Indiana University. As we covered in a four-part series last month, the Media School was trying to force the IDS to be part of a converged media environment under its rank and dominion. When this thing hit, here was the university’s response:

When asked if IU had any comment on Beckwith’s claims about IU and his potential action toward the IDS, IU spokesperson Mark Bode said “The Indiana Daily Student is editorially independent from Indiana University.”

In case you are unfamiliar, that’s what it sounds like when someone jumps ship…

DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE: This is the kind of ham-handed, saber-rattling stupidity that comes from people who claim to love this country but consistently fail to understand what our country actually protects and allows. The same freedom of speech that allowed Donald Trump to call Kamala Harris “a shitty vice president” and allowed Beckwith to refer to his opponents as having the “Jezebel spirit” also protects speech that Beckwith DOESN’T like.

I could also go back to that famous line about never picking a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel, and add that you shouldn’t take on a media outlet that has 10 times the number of followers you do on X.

I often get responses to posts like this calling me “an academic liberal” or a “lefty professor,” both of which are not only untrue, but so far afield they’re likely to make my mother laugh so hard she could pass an entire Subway footlong through her nose.

In truth, I’m neither left or right, but I am definitely anti-bully and anti-hypocrite. I see this guy as being in both zones, so that’s why he really needs a reality check.

ACTION OFFER: If you want to tell Beckwith what you think about this, you can hit him up on Twitter/X, or email him through his campaign website here. Maybe if he hears enough from enough people, he’ll learn something.

That said, the guy literally thinks that Jesus pushed him to take the Beckwith Model of Intolerance and Stupidity ™ to the political sphere, so I somehow doubt he’s going to back off.

“Is this the hill you are willing to die on?” When to fight back against abject stupidity (A throwback post)

A number of events formed the confluence for this throwback post. First, the situation at Indiana University, where the Media School is forcing choices upon the staff of the Indiana Daily Student, WIUX and IU Student Television. The students there, particularly those in the IDS, are not thrilled about this and I’ve had a conversation with a few of them about that.

(I had planned to do a quick Q and A with the IDS folks and post that right after the initial post I put together on this. However, as I dug deeper, this whole thing got officially out of hand. I’m working on a series I hope will be ready next week. Don’t worry, IDS folks. I haven’t abandoned you. It’s just that there’s a lot more weird than meets the eye.)

Second, I spoke to the UWO volleyball team last night about their vision for the rest of the season. Coach said they were tired, beaten up and not sure of themselves in some cases. In discussing their approach and how best to meet some goals, I broke out the titular phrase listed in the headline.

Third, we’re still facing SLAPP suits and it’s hurting media outlets as they are forced to respond to nonsense. An appeals court ruled in favor of the Wausau Pilot & Review in a case where a politician claimed the publication libeled him by reporting he used an anti-gay slur. The politician lost the case on the grounds he was a public figure, something patently obvious to anyone who knows libel law. Still, this drained time and funding from the publication. Although a Go Fund Me drive and attention from the NY Times helped with the legal fees, the editor said the paper had to refrain from hiring due to the impact of the case.

Finally, I ended up spending time earlier this month with Allison and Tony at their place in Michigan. Somewhere in the calm, cool morning, surrounded by pines as big as skyscrapers, we were talking and realized we’d known each other for more than 30 years. That’s a lot of life and a lot of opportunities to pick a hill or two to die on. As we reminisced, it hit me that we must have picked the right hills, or at least avoided the wrong ones, to make it this far and still be the best of friends.

Enjoy.

 

SLAPPed around: How people with money who dislike your work can make your life miserable (legally)

About a year ago, we talked about the legal triangle that existed between coal magnate Bob Murray, comedian John Oliver and a 7-foot-tall squirrel named Mr. Nutterbutter.

The short version of this was that Oliver did a big piece on the coal-mining industry, in which he called out Murray’s company and made fun of the 79-year-old for a variety of things he did and said. Murray filed suit in West Virginia, claiming Oliver defamed him and seeking not only damages (to be specified by the court), but also a permanent injunction barring Oliver from ever broadcasting the piece again. It also sought to eliminate all copies of the “Last Week Tonight” story from public viewing.

A year ago, the state threw out the case against Oliver and HBO, stating that this was satire in some cases and free speech in all cases. (I still think the greatest legal argument came from the amicus brief filed by the West Virginia ACLU that noted, “Anyone Can Legally Say, ‘Eat Shit, Bob.’”) When the court tossed the case, Oliver let his fans know about it in a truly “Last Week Tonight” fashion:

Contrary to the title of that clip, however, Murray hadn’t given up the ship quite yet. He appealed the decision to the state’s supreme court before eventually dropping the case recently. Oliver then finally made good on his 2-year-old promise to tell us “the whole story” about what happened with the suit.

(Normally, I would upload the link to the piece here, but I think my publisher would kill me in this case if I did so. I have been told repeatedly that “students at small religious institutions” read this blog as part of their homework. Let’s just say that the dancing and singing number at the end is “a lot.” Feel free to find it on your own on YouTube.)

Oliver, however, didn’t spend all 25 minutes of the main story on a self-congratulatory Broadway-style number that pushed satire into a completely incredible stratosphere. His main point was about the way in which people with money can engage in ridiculous lawsuits to crush dissent, which is something of serious concern to journalists these days.

Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, or SLAPPs, use the legal system as a sword as opposed to a shield. The goal of these, according to the Public Participation Project, is to crush free speech with lawsuits that have no merit:

SLAPPs are used to silence and harass critics by forcing them to spend money to defend these baseless suits. SLAPP filers don’t go to court to seek justice. Rather, SLAPPS are intended to intimidate those who disagree with them or their activities by draining the target’s financial resources.

In short, even if you win the point as the target of one of these SLAPP suits, you lose because you go broke. We covered this kind of situation when we talked about the small-town Iowa newspaper that went after a police officer who had been showing waaaaay too much interest in underage girls. The cop sued for libel and lost in a huge way. However, the paper ran up a six-figure debt defending itself and turned to a GoFundMe campaign to try to save itself.

In Oliver’s case, it cost about $200,000 to defend the coal piece and led to a tripling of his libel insurance premiums. And that was BEFORE he ran his giant Broadway number that went even further in talking crap about Bob Murray.

About 30 states have anti-SLAPP laws on the books now, which try to cut this kind of nonsense off at the pass. Although they vary from state to state, the gist of anti-SLAPP laws is that the person being sued can ask the court to view the story in question as being in the public interest (or at least free speech). It then is the plaintiff’s job to show that the suit has merit.

If those folks can’t meet that burden and it becomes clear it’s a SLAPP suit, the case gets tossed. In some cases, the law calls for the plaintiff to cover all legal bills derived from this stupid exercise.

However, not every state has these laws (Murray sued Oliver in West Virginia for precisely that reason) and not all laws are equally helpful to journalists. This makes life a little dicey for you if you want to take a shot at someone who has probably done something wrong but is likely to be extremely litigious.

Every time you ply your trade, you run the risk of being sued, regardless of if you did something wrong or if someone is just being a chucklehead. With that in mind, here are a few things to think about when it comes to SLAPPs:

IT’S NOT A SUIT UNTIL IT’S FILED: My good buddy Fred Vultee used to say this a lot on the copy desk when a story about someone threatening to sue would come across his desk. His point, and it’s a good one, was that anyone can threaten anything. Until paperwork is filed, all this huffing and puffing does is create a lot of wind.

As we pointed out in earlier posts, you shouldn’t panic and try to run away whenever someone threatens you with a suit. Instead, you should see what it is that is upsetting that person, if that concern has merit and if something needs to be done to resolve the concern before it gets too far down the road. If you’re wrong, an anti-SLAPP law isn’t going to help you.

As the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press points out, anti-SLAPP laws aren’t meant to solve every legal problem for journalists. They are just one more tool in your toolbox that can be helpful when a specific situation comes up.

If you’re right, and it become clear this person is just trying to mess with you, then you can start thinking about lawyers, laws and SLAPP stuff.

DOES SOMEONE HAVE YOUR BACK?: When we talked to Alex Crowe of The Great 98 a year or so ago, he found himself in the middle of what could be considered a SLAPP case. He reported on a messy police situation, which included a reference to a drug bust and a cop’s kid. The officer involved threatened to sue unless the station scrubbed its website of all stories involving this.

Although point one really applies here, sometimes, just the threat of a suit is enough to make people up the chain nervous about sticking their necks out for you. In Crowe’s case, the first inclination of the people around him was to back off. He did, however, know that if he could protect himself and the station without draining every resource from the organization, he would still be in decent shape. That’s where the RCFP came into play. The folks there provided him with legal advice, some pro-bono counsel and a chance to push back at the threats. That was enough to put the kabosh on the whole thing.

Organizations vary as do bosses. I’ve worked for people who would step in front of a bus for me. I’ve also worked for people who would not only push me in front of a bus, but would be more than glad to drive it over me a couple times if it kept their keesters out of the fire. This was the determining factor for a lot of what it was that I was doing in terms of fighting with angry sources, disgruntled subjects and other folks who were potentially litigious.

If you know where you stand with the people who might or might not stand with you on a situation, you at least have a sense of how scared you should be going forward. For all of his zany antics, something tells me that Oliver had more than a few conversations with his bosses at HBO about what might happen as a result of going after Murray before he aired the piece.

IS THE JUICE WORTH THE SQUEEZE?: In employing this “Filak-ism,” I’m likely to earn the ire of many old-school news journalists. In the idealized world of news, the goal is to tell the truth, consequences be damned. You HAVE to tell the truth and you MUST push back against powerful forces. In the movies, it always looks like this:

There’s that sense of “Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!” that brings vigor to journalism and that is trumpeted as “this is why we do what we do.” I’ll never argue that in a perfect world, the bad guys get punished, the truth gets told and Gary Cooper always rides off into the sunset with Grace Kelly.

We don’t live in a perfect world and if you need any proof of that, go look at the approval ratings of journalists these days.

My friend Allison and I used to ask when we would deal with difficult situations or plan those Quixotic efforts, “Is this the hill you’re willing to die on?” In other words, if everything goes to hell in a speedboat and you don’t end up winning the day and Gary Cooper gets run over by a horse while Grace Kelly runs off with the blacksmith instead, are you OK with that? Was this worth it?

In the case of Crowe’s story, he felt it was worth it and he ran the risk of losing the fight, the ability to do good news and maybe even his job. In the case of the “Spotlight” story, the Boston Globe eventually got the pieces in front of the public and unveiled some of the darkest elements of the powerful force that was the Catholic church.

In the case of John Oliver, well, we got another awesome moment or 12 from Mr. Nutterbutter, so I guess that was good as well.

The point is, if you’re going to take on someone who will likely torture you with legal stuff and drain your piggy bank of every last cent, make sure you feel it’s a worthwhile endeavor. If you don’t, then let it go and be OK with the fact someone is getting away with lousy behavior because of your choices.

I think I found my first tattoo, thanks to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis: “It’s the First Amendment, stupid.”

Here is an ad at the center of Florida’s Amendment 4 situation. Like it or hate it, ads like this are protected speech.

THE LEAD: A federal judge decided that Florida officials can’t threaten TV stations for running ads they don’t like, using language that has me pondering my first tattoo:

Judge Mark Walker blasted state officials in an order issued late Thursday over a letter demanding broadcasters pull the ad, writing that its content is political speech protected by the U.S. Constitution.

“To keep it simple for the State of Florida: it’s the First Amendment, stupid,” Walker wrote in a temporary restraining order released Thursday night.

 

BACKGROUND: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his administration had threatened broadcast stations that ran ads supporting Amendment 4, which would overturn his executive order that imposed a six-week ban on abortions.

A letter from DeSantis’ health department’s general counsel told the stations it would seek criminal charges against stations if they didn’t pull the ads in 24 hours that “spread lies” about the current ban.

John Wilson, the author of the letter, has since resigned, stating “it has become clear in recent days that I cannot join you on the road that lies before the agency.”

 

A BRIEF REVIEW OF THE LAW: The argument Ron DeSantis and his crew have made here is that the ads are false, so he has the right to stop them. To borrow a phrase from the judge: That’s not how this works, stupid.

In cases of false commercial advertising, the Federal Trade Commission gets involved upon complaints from the public. The truth-in-advertising laws here and the FTC’s authority relate to demonstrably false or genuinely misleading advertisements related to products, goods and services.

Therefore, when you see an ad that promises you will lose 10 pounds a day on a jelly-donut diet, without the usual small-print caveats about not eating the donuts and making sure to exercise, the FTC can threaten the organization with fines. For example, it recently settled a claim against the makers of Pyrex glass for $88,000, after the company stated many of its imported kitchen items were “made in the U.S.A.”

The FTC, however, doesn’t handle political advertising and in most cases, and neither does the other group that looks into broadcast content of this nature: The Federal Communication Commission. According to its own website, the FCC neither pre-approves or reviews political advertising, nor does it “ensure the accuracy of statements that are made by candidates and issue advertisers.” In fact, the one thing it DOES do in this regard is prohibit the censorship of candidate-sponsored ads.

In short, candidates can lie if they want to. In terms of issue-oriented advertising, the First Amendment provides a wide level of protection for speech on the air waves. This article does a great job of outlining where a few guardrails do exist for the sake of cable news stations and other media outlets, in terms of stopping patently false stuff from going out on their channels.

 

DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE:  Given the relative randomness of jurisprudence in this country, including judges not understanding how the First Amendment and journalism tends to work, I have to say I was pleasantly surprised that a judge supported free speech in the appropriate way. Whether the ads were pro or con and whether they were true or false isn’t the point. The point is that the law exists for a reason, and when mini-despots decide to take a ham-handed whack at someone’s free speech rights, it’s nice to see those people put in their place.

That said, I’m not entirely thrilled that the law provides literally no mechanism to stop people from lying in a political campaign, nor is there really any recourse for people who are lied about to put a stop to the lying. I’m a big believer in facts, so I’d really like it if politicians told me the truth. (I’m also a big fan of having a full head of hair, but that’s not happening today either.)

Given the way AI has made it so much easier for people to manipulate everything, it’s really scary that not only can people make ads where we can’t tell the truth from fiction, but also to know that the law says the lying part is OK. The FCC is trying to get some sort of transparency law put into place that would require advertisers to disclose the use of AI in campaign ads, but it’s not here yet.

With that in mind, this puts a lot more pressure on fact-checking organizations to ferret out the truth and private sleuths to dig into potential AI fakes. It also requires more of us as citizens to do our own research when we see ads claiming that Donald Trump once killed a unicorn and that Kamala Harris hosted a Tupperware party for MS-13 members who entered the U.S. illegally.

Former UW La Crosse Chancellor Joe Gow loses his tenured professor position after UW Board of Regents decides porn is icky

I know this shouldn’t be my primary concern, but a) is it accurate to call him “chancellor” in the headline and b) is porn-making chancellor properly hyphenated as a compound modifier. If I had to guess, I’d say a = no, but b = yes.

ED NOTE: As was the case when we covered this in December, I apologize in advance for any double entendres. It is almost impossible to write this without hearing a 12-year-old boy in my head laughing, despite my best efforts to avoid such concerns.

Also, Monday, we’ll have a Q and A with one of the First Amendment attorneys at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, the organization that has helped Joe Gow get legal representation.

THE LEAD: Joe Gow, the former University of Wisconsin La Crosse chancellor who was removed from his position after his bosses realized he was making porn videos in his spare time, was fired from his tenure position at the university as well on Friday.

The regents voted unanimously to terminate Gow. Deliberations were made in a closed session away from the public for about half an hour.

In December, university officials discovered Gow had produced and starred in pornographic content across the web in videos and self-authored books he published under a pseudonym. He was fired as chancellor and recommended to be stripped of his tenure.

Besides his future with UW, Gow has also lost $300,000 in accrued medical benefits. Before his June hearing, Gow said he was planning on using the benefits for more than a decade of coverage into his retirement.

 

THE BACKGROUND: We covered this situation here back when Gow lost his role as chancellor when the porn first came to light back in December.

Long story short, the regents removed him after they found out he was making porn. Gow stated he never used university materials, services or anything related to his job as he and his wife made the adult videos. That said, the role of chancellor was basically “You serve at the pleasure of the regents,” so he got yanked.

Still, like most administrators, he had what are called “retreat rights,” which meant he had the right to go back and teach in the department to which his expertise is tied. Thus, the regents had to figure out how to rid themselves of Gow and the baggage his hobby carried without breaking the law or violating his rights as an employed, tenured professor.

 

NEXT STEPS: Gow is out of a job but he is strongly considering legal action against the university. Gow noted he thinks this could go to the Supreme Court, as previous cases involving unpopular but totally legal speech have in the past few decades.

 

DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE:  The university and the UW system have been stacking sandbags on this one to try to find anything they can fire him for, other than what they are actually firing him for.

There have been accusations of refusing to cooperate with an investigation into his activities, perhaps violating the UW technology policies, engaging in “unethical and potentially illegal conduct” and engaging in activities that would harm his ability to be an effective teacher.

What they really want to say is “This makes us all uncomfortable. Joe did icky stuff, so he needs to go away.”

The problem with what they want to say is that it violates the First Amendment. I always go back to the simplest explanation I have for the First Amendment: It’s not meant to protect expression people like. It’s meant to protect expression people DON’T like.

I’ve also spent more than a little time thinking about the question, “How much of my soul does the university have the right to own?” I mean, sure, there’s the time in class and the time with the kids outside of class and the time in my office and the time publishing and the … Eh… You get the idea.

However, what happens when the university decides that whatever expression I want to engage in or someone else on faculty wants to engage it is considered too uncomfortable for words?

I’m quite certain my friends in the LGBTQ+ community who are of a certain age and worked at public universities found themselves a bit wary of what their private lives would mean for their public jobs. If we kept along that more conservative line of thinking, what would it take for a university to find that two people of the sexual orientation being together as a couple made for a firing offense today?

Conversely, I also know that opinions on certain things tend to change over time, so what seems OK at the moment, might lead to concerns in the future. For a while, there was this massive trend of everyone getting Chinese symbols tattooed on themselves as a form of expression and few people thought twice about it. (One of my students at the time, however, did say that his father, who was fluent in the language, would not write out such symbols for people as it was a cultural concern.)

Today, cultural appropriation is a concern and rightly so, could there be a risk to a professor at a public institution who has these permanent markings in a visible place if enough people make noise about it? I don’t know, but I like living in a world where the First Amendment says, “You can be upset, but you can’t punish someone for expression that is offensive.”

What happens when police use AI to draft their incident reports?

(We’re not quite here yet, but it’s a little disconcerting how I keep finding parallels between RoboCop and reality. Also, that Kurtwood Smith was somehow less threatening here than in “That ’70s Show.”)

THE LEAD: Some police organizations are experimenting with AI, in which ChatBots are writing the first drafts of their situation reports based on what the officers’ body cameras capture.

“They become police officers because they want to do police work, and spending half their day doing data entry is just a tedious part of the job that they hate,” said Axon’s founder and CEO Rick Smith, describing the new AI product — called Draft One — as having the “most positive reaction” of any product the company has introduced.

“Now, there’s certainly concerns,” Smith added. In particular, he said district attorneys prosecuting a criminal case want to be sure that police officers — not solely an AI chatbot — are responsible for authoring their reports because they may have to testify in court about what they witnessed.

“They never want to get an officer on the stand who says, well, ‘The AI wrote that, I didn’t,’” Smith said.

The pilot programs have found that the reports that once took 30-45 minutes to draft can be done in a matter of seconds. To kind of hedge their bets on the issue of how much they should be leaning on the technology, some departments are using the AI on misdemeanors and petty crime.

Aside from the idea that the computer might be doing the officers’ “homework” for them, legal scholars and civil-rights activists are concerned about the impact this could have on society as a whole:

“I am concerned that automation and the ease of the technology would cause police officers to be sort of less careful with their writing,” said Ferguson, a law professor at American University working on what’s expected to be the first law review article on the emerging technology.

Ferguson said a police report is important in determining whether an officer’s suspicion “justifies someone’s loss of liberty.” It’s sometimes the only testimony a judge sees, especially for misdemeanor crimes.

 

DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE: Accuracy and legality lead the list of my concerns here. At one point in the article, the officer notes that the AI included a detail he didn’t remember hearing. That could be the AI capturing something real or it could be fabricating something that the officer then kind of adopted as true.

Experts and users have found AI can engage in “hallucinations” where it presents something untrue as fact. It’s kind of funny when AI tells us that the downfall of Western Civilization began when the coach refused to put Uncle Rico in at quarterback in the ’82 finals. It’s less funny when it tells a court of law that you threatened a cop who pulled you over for speeding.

The officers interviewed for the story mention that they’ve become more verbal in their interactions with the public, which allows the body camera to capture that information and thus improve the AI report.

In this kind of case, it feels more like transcription than creation, which seems safer, but who knows. What would be beneficial for reporters in cases like this would be to get the AI-based reports and the officer’s body-cam footage to do a side-by-side comparison.

Legally speaking, I would be curious to know what levels of access journalists could have to the AI version of a report as well as the final version of a report. Police reports and court documents are public records, but some internal memos and drafts of public items can occasionally be considered off limits. In addition, it’s technically not being created by a public figure, but it’s the ramblings of a computer program. Who can have access to what, when and where and how is interesting here.

It’s also interesting to see how well these things hold up in court compared to other reports, witness testimony and so forth. As with anything new, there’s going to be a learning curve and development issues, with the older technology probably still being better.

When we first started seeing automobiles, they could barely break into double digits in terms of their mph speed. Meanwhile, horses could literally and figuratively run circles around them. As time went on, cars clearly became the faster mode of transportation, but it took a while. It’ll be interesting to see how many lawyers start asking questions like, “So, Officer Smith, did you write the initial report of this or did you rely on artificial intelligence to do it for you?” and then showing off all the stupid things AI has written to undermine AI’s credibility.

The folks in the article who distrust the AI process have noted concerns about racial targeting and other such issues in terms of bias against people traditionally mistreated by legal wrangling. We have seen AI generate some of those kinds of biased reports here, and it is a valid concern. I would probably go a step beyond this, only to say that I’d be really concerned in general for anyone who is being accused of criminal activity while the police are working the kinks out on this system. The article notes that the crimes are generally “low level” but that doesn’t make me feel much better if I’m on the other end of an AI disaster.

 

Earth to Universities: You can’t like free expression only when it’s expression you like

A print of artist Phil Hands’ cartoon on free speech hangs on the wall of my office, with a nice message from this incredibly talented person. I think this message matters now more than ever.

THE LEAD: Universities are pushing back on speech and assembly efforts in the wake of pro-Palestine protests on campuses throughout the country. Both on campuses and at the federal level, concerns regarding antisemitism and Islamophobia have led to inquires and crackdowns.

Zoom in: Tensions at Columbia bubbled over last week after university president Minouche Shafik called in the NYPD to disband a pro-Palestinian encampment at the center of campus.

  • The University of Michigan said it would draft a new policy on punishable disruptive behavior following a pro-Palestinian protest at its convocation.
  • The University of Southern California canceled its valedictorian’s commencement speech, citing safety concerns that the student called a “campaign of racist hatred.”
  • Stanford University banned overnight camping in February to end an encampment populated by dueling pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli tents, citing student safety, extreme weather and rodents.

FIRST-AMENDMENT BASICS: The First Amendment to the Constitution allows for freedom of expression in a number of ways, including speech, press and assembly. State actors (meaning public officials, public organizations or otherwise government-ish people or groups) cannot step in and deny these rights without some exceptional circumstances.

The law requires a risk of “imminent lawless action” or “clear and present danger” to exist for the government prohibit these kinds of expressions. Examples of this kind of risk include things like inciting a crowd to destroy property or chanting “We are going to kill the chancellor” during a march. That’s why yelling “Mike Pence is a traitor” isn’t the same as yelling “Hang Mike Pence” during the Jan. 6 incident in Washington, D.C.

In some cases, the law can allow for restrictions based on the time, place and manner of the expression, but it also states that the restrictions must be content neutral. In other words, if the mayor of your town refuses to allow a “Pro-Vegetable” march at 5 a.m. because it would be disruptive to the sleeping habits of the citizens, that mayor can’t then allow a “Pro-Beef” march to occur at 5 a.m.

For a more complete view, check out this great primer at the Freedom Forum.

KEY FREAKOUT POINT: This is what happens when the vaguely educated (Congress) asks questions of the overly educated (Ivy League university administrators) and fear is a driving force in the discussion.

Back in November, the presidents of Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania resigned after they reacted to questions of campus antisemitism the way my dog does when I present her with a physics textbook.

Congress, trying to make a point, asked if “calling for the genocide of Jews” violated the campus speech codes and neither of these esteemed educators could find a coherent answer. (As these are both private institutions, they get more leeway about what can and can’t happen on their campus than do public institutions. More on that later.)

What happened next was what always happens next at a time like this: More administrators get called to answer similar questions under a totally disingenuous guise by people who have no interest other than “pwning” these folks.

Thus, to avoid being the next university egghead on the chopping block, these folks force everything 180-degrees in the opposite direction, to the point where saying “bless you” is somehow a hanging offense. Fear drives the silencing of certain voices that people worry might not be as popular as others. The goal is to “run clock” for a while, in hopes that everything will just calm down once the kids find a new TikTok challenge or something.

Words are scary, particularly when you are being accused of certain things. Nobody likes being accused of antisemitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, racism, sexism and other such things. Certain words carry with them a permanent stain, and that can be terrifying enough to make people do or not do certain things. I often think back to this clip from “Apt Pupil” in that regard:

 

REALITY CHECK: As much as it would be great if we could all just get along about everything, that’s not the way life works. This is why we have laws in place to deal with what can and can’t happen when people feel the need to disagree.

The law is clear on how speech and assembly work: Unless you can demonstrate that whatever these people are saying or wherever they are going will lead to lawless action, they have the right to say what they want to say and go where they want to go. The law isn’t here to protect popular speech, but ALL speech.

This is why, as much as it can infuriate folks that a group of Nazis can march through a predominantly Jewish part of Illinois, or that a group of “religious” folks can show up with signs at a military funeral proclaiming “Thank God for dead soldiers,” speech can’t be suppressed for being repulsive alone.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression explicitly explains why even calls for the genocide of a particular group remain protected under the First Amendment.

DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE: Everyone has a level at which they think a line should be drawn when it comes to speech being problematic, but quite literally, the cure for bad speech isn’t speech suppression. It’s MORE speech. It’s also been clear that there are always risks that unpopular speech may lead to violence, but we have laws to deal with that violence once it actually occurs. Stopping speech because it might end poorly has the same internal logic as the traffic cop who pulls over the Corvette driver because the car “looks like it could go fast.”

The administrators of these schools need to have stronger intestinal fortitude when it comes to supporting free speech, even if it’s going to be wildly unpopular or allow some senator from Bumbledirt, Wyoming to call them all sorts of names on the Senate floor.

Yes, it sucks when you have to deal with difficult situations, but standing for principles is supposed to be administrators’ resting pulse. If you think having people say mean stuff about you on Twitter/X is rough, read this piece by David Goldberger, a Jewish attorney who represented the Nazis in the Skokie case. Members of Jewish Defense League showed up at Goldberger’s office with baseball bats trying to beat the hell out of him. The rabbi at his parents’ synagogue gave a speech denouncing Goldberger personally for taking the case.  He was threatened and called a self-loathing Jew for his troubles and yet in retrospect, he remains as stalwart in his beliefs as ever:

To this day, I have no doubt that the ACLU’s commitment to equal rights for all is a backbone of our democracy — no matter how offensive our clients are. Chipping away at this commitment will open the door to the erosion of the First Amendment as a bulwark against rule by tyrants.

In short, if you want your free speech, you have to be willing to stand up for everyone else’s speech as well.

A PROMISING POST-SCRIPT: As I was finishing this off, a friend forwarded this article about how student journalists on these campuses are not only covering the situation, but taking strong editorial stances in favor of free speech.

As we always say in student media, “Leave it to the kids to lead the way.”

 

UW-Madison gets sued to produce athletes’ NIL agreements, likely leading to an open-records battle with UW Foundation

THE LEAD: A journalist is suing UW-Madison after the public university refused to release documents related to name, image and likeness (NIL) contracts it has in place with student athletes. The university is playing a fantastic shell game here, claiming it doesn’t have the contract, but rather the UW Foundation does. The Foundation thus argues it doesn’t have to release the contract because it’s a private entity:

“There’s no good reason why UW-Madison should be using its foundation to effectively offshore public records,” journalist Daniel Libit told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Spokespeople for both UW-Madison and the UW Foundation said they hadn’t received the complaint and wouldn’t comment on pending litigation.

(ED NOTE: To clarify, the contract under discussion is the one between the UW and Altius Sports Partners, “a firm other large universities have hired to support student-athletes who can now profit from endorsement deals they strike.” Individual deals like athlete Bill Smith agreeing with Vince Filak Ford to appear in commercials are private contracts between private individuals and private companies and not subject to open records law.

If, however, athlete Bill Smith signed an NIL agreement of some kind with a PUBLIC institution, the public entity would would be required to fork over the paperwork. Bill Smith could still tell you to go to hell and take a left.)

BACKSTORY: The true NIL set up is about three years old, but it traces its history back to a lawsuit filed by former UCLA basketball player Ed O’Bannon in the early 2000s. O’Bannon discovered that his likeness was being used in an NCAA video game and he was not provided with compensation for that.

The NCAA argued (as it had for generations) that O’Bannon was a “student-athlete” which meant he didn’t get paid in cash, but rather got a really cool scholarship and the ability to be exploited… er… part of a team sport. The courts thought differently and rendered a judgment of more than $44 million in legal fees. The upshot of that was that the universities were either going to have to stop making money off of student athletes (Hard No) or find a way to compensate athletes (Not thrilled, but grudgingly complied).

Thus, the NCAA let the students have say over their usage in commercials, endorsements and more. This is why you now see commercials like this one, with Iowa star Caitlin Clark:

 

CHAOS ENSUES: Name five things that happen when money gets involved in anything where money wasn’t there before, and at least four of them will not be pleasant.

Over the past three years, the NIL experience has fallen in line with maxim this for a number of reasons:

  • Laws differ from state to state and with no federal law on it, it’s the wild west.
  • Schools differ in terms of resources, so basically one place can essentially “buy” a college kid with the promise of a sweeter NIL agreement than wherever they currently play.
  • People have always taken advantage of student athletes for their own nefarious interests, only now the money getting thrown around is bigger and at least quasi-legal.

Long story short, the NIL situation is like spotting a cockroach in your house: Whatever you saw, chances are the problems you didn’t see are much worse. Thus, the need to pry records out from under whatever rock these institutions are keeping them to figure out what is going on.

DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE: First, I really hope Libit wins because what little experience I have had with foundations and private money has shown me that there is likely a LOT of shady stuff going on related to the NIL situation.

I remember trying to find out how a coach’s contract was bought out, only to find the money came through a foundation. I tried to figure out how a student newspaper was staying afloat, only to find out that the money came through a foundation. In my own institution, we had a ridiculous game of three-card monte that almost landed our foundation in bankruptcy and our former chancellor in jail. In each case, the foundation pulled the “we’re a private entity” card and it wasn’t until everything went to hell in a speedboat that we even got a sniff of what had happened, if we found out at all.

Second, Libit is absolutely wrong about there being “no good reason” why UW-Madison is stashing these contracts somewhere that open-records requests can’t get them. It’s the same “good reason” people go out to eat at a conspicuous place, pay with a credit card and make sure everyone at the bar talked to them from 7-9 p.m. on a Tuesday, the exact time a hit man is whacking one of their enemies.

If I had a dime for every time a public official used some weaselly dodge to avoid creating or turning over public records, I’d probably be able to NIL my way into a great team here at UWO in every sport. There was Sarah Palin and Scott Walker using private emails to dodge open records when they served their respective states. There was Missouri’s governor, Eric Greitens, who had his staff using an app that destroyed messages after they were read to avoid open records requests.

And then there was the time Ball State told us that the documents pertaining to a provost search weren’t “open records” but essentially an “inter-office memo” only intended to be shared with the 35, 000 people at or around the university.

Third, and most importantly, if I were the people at Foundation, I’d give them the damned Altius contract right now. As it stands, courts haven’t ruled that foundation records are public. If these chuckleheads let this go through a court system and some judge (or multiple judges, as I’m imagining they’d appeal a loss) decides ALL their records ARE open, that’s not going to bode well for foundations everywhere. That’s not just me yammering. The pro journalists know it:

It’s like when people in the state of Wisconsin wondered, “Gee, why are the Republicans agreeing to Democrat Gov. Tony Evers’ redistricting maps after fighting against them for years?” The answer was, the court was going to make its own decision and it was likely going to screw them more than if they just signed off on Evers’ maps.

Of course, I’m guessing the Foundation isn’t going to be this smart, so it should be a fun fight to watch.

UW La Crosse Chancellor Joe Gow fired after appearing in porn with his wife, which raises First Amendment concerns

Sometimes, a headline just says it all…

ED NOTE: I apologize in advance for any double entendres. It is almost impossible to write this without hearing a 12-year-old boy in my head laughing, despite my best efforts to avoid such concerns.

THE LEAD: Less than a year after being lauded as a heck of a great chancellor for his stewardship of UW La Crosse, Joe Gow was fired from his leadership role after the UW Board of Regents found out he’d been doing porn on the side:

“In recent days, we learned of specific conduct by Dr. Gow that has subjected the university to significant reputational harm,” UW System President Jay Rothman said. “His actions were abhorrent.”

Board President Karen Walsh said Gow showed “a reckless disregard” for his role as a UW-La Crosse leader.

“We are alarmed, and disgusted, by his actions, which were wholly and undeniably inconsistent with his role as chancellor,” she said.

The 63-year-old tenured communications professor had planned to transition back to a faculty role after completing this final year of his chancellorship. That is currently under review, after Rothman asked the UWL interim chancellor to review his status in that role as well.

Gow said in a Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel interview that he was stunned by the firing, especially since it happened without him present, and noted he felt the First Amendment protected such activities:

Gow said he didn’t know how UW System became aware of the videos, which were all posted within the past two months. No one at UW System or on the UW Board of Regents had asked about his hobby, he said.

“I would say that anything that I do or my my wife and I do, we do as citizens in the United States, who have the freedom of First Amendment to the Constitution, to create and publish books and videos that explore consensual adult sexuality,” he said.

FIRST AMENDMENT CONCERNS: Gow discussed the issue of the First Amendment and his view of how it protected his actions in these films. The First Amendment does cover sexually explicit material, as we’ve noted here before.

It also covers not just speech everyone likes, but speech that people DON’T like. It’s easy to get behind a student newspaper that wants to report that the lunch server was fired for giving poor students extra food. It’s a little more difficult to support speech that leads to a question like, “Hey, wanna watch my chancellor do his wife?”

I reached out to one of my “legal eagle” friends for a general sense of how much ground Gow had to stand on in this case.

He noted that Gow is likely in a “doctrine vs. practical reality” kind of situation. From a pure First Amendment standpoint, he noted, he couldn’t imagine this not being constitutionally protected, so long as Gow wasn’t using UWL time and resources. (In his interviews to this point, Gow noted that he did this on his own time, never once mentioned UWL and basically remained unnamed in his video stuff.)

That said, he also noted that in a more practical fashion, the system would likely make the case that Gow’s video activities made it impossible for him to do his day job as chancellor (and maybe professor) effectively.

The legal eagle referenced the Pickering v. Board of Education (1968) case in which a school teacher had been fired for complaining about the board of education in a letter to the editor of the local newspaper. The Supreme Court reversed the lower court’s ruling, saying that off-duty speech of public employees is protected up to the point where it interferes with the functionality of the employees’ organization.

DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE: Dear Lord… where to start…

First and foremost, I’m a huge fan of the First Amendment. The ability to say and do things that make other people uncomfortable is woven into the very fabric of our establishment as a country and a society. I don’t like the idea of people of any kind saying that something that is legal should lead to punitive consequences for an individual based on other people feeling “icky” about it.

I also don’t like the lack of due process afforded to Gow in this case. Like most things institutions do quickly behind closed doors in our society, Gow’s firing appears to be a railroading of a man who did his job but now makes us uncomfortable.

Second, this isn’t the first time that an institution has punished an employee for naked stuff. Brianna Copperage, a high school teacher in Missouri, was fired after word of her OnlyFans account got around to the school district. She was doing sexually explicit content on the site to augment her meager teacher pay and noted that nothing in the school’s charter prohibited her from doing so. (It also says something that she made more in a month from OnlyFans than she made the entire year teaching.)

A Colorado law enforcement officer was essentially canned after she was outed as a content provider on OnlyFans. Melissa Williams said she was forced to resign once her superiors found out about her sexually explicit content. A similar thing happened to Detroit police officer Janelle Zielinski and others I’m sure.

Look, I totally get the regents’ reaction to all of this, in that it probably freaked them out to find out one of the chancellors was online doing porn. And yes, he was DOING PORN.

(As much as I really, really, REALLY didn’t want to, the reporter in me forced myself to look at the one free, publicly available site noted in the news articles. I needed to see if a) the stuff was there, b) Gow was actually involved and c) was this actually porn or just some general weird “let’s talk about sex” stuff.

The answers are a) yes, b) yes and c) full-on, hard-core, oh-my-GOD-this-is-happening porn. There are days I really hate myself…)

That said, there’s nothing requiring anyone else to go looking for this guy’s “greatest hits” album out there. If seeing this guy and his wife doing the nasty bothers you, don’t go and watch it. This is the same reason I’ve never been to a strip club. Aside from my awkwardness around people in general and the complete discomfort I imagine that kind of a place would give me, my greatest fear would be finding out that one of my students worked there. I imagine my reaction would be something like this:

The point is , the courts have drawn lines already that limit what the First Amendment does and doesn’t cover. If this guy were doing something illegal, if he were employed by a private company or if he were bogarting state funds to do this, we’d be in a different situation. However, it looks like the regents just tried to kill a fly with a sledgehammer and I’m going to be interested to see what the repercussions are for their actions.

 

 

Help protect student journalists in Wisconsin by supporting New Voices legislation this week. (Please share)

Please put this on blast: The State of Wisconsin is moving toward passing New Voices legislation. Assembly Bill 551 will have a hearing on Thursday, Oct. 26 (see below) and they need your help.

The Student Press Law Center has a whole roster of information on New Voices legislation throughout the United States. In simplest terms, here’s how it works:

New Voices is a student-powered nonpartisan grassroots movement of state-based activists who seek to protect student press freedom with state laws. These laws counteract the impact of the 1988 Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier Supreme Court decision, which dramatically changed the balance of student press rights. New Voices supporters include advocates in law, education, journalism and civics who want schools and colleges to be more welcoming places for student voices.

Seventeen states have this legislation passed in some form, which guarantees  student press rights Not only will this free high school media outlets from significant censorship, but it will codify the rights of college student media outlets and voices as well. In short, ham-handed administrators who just don’t like things that fail to paint the rosiest of pictures about their institution can’t crush student media for reporting the facts.

Please read the information forwarded to me last night via Matt Smith, the Wisconsin JEA president about this important hearing and how you can help get this law moving in the right direction

After years of waiting, Wisconsin finally has movement on a New Voices bill that protects student First Amendment rights by stipulating that student journalists are responsible for determining the content of student publications at public secondary schools and colleges! Assembly Bill 551 would prohibit administrative prior review and outline specific, legally defined forms of expression that are unprotected (such as libel, obscenity and invasion of privacy or speech that would cause a substantial disruption of school activities or violate other state or federal laws).

Students at every level need to know they can ask questions about and report on topics that are important to them and their communities without fear that their choices will be made for them or removed altogether. It’s more important than ever that our institutions put learning first and foster environments that develop critical thinking and communication skills our students will need to succeed in future workplaces and as future citizens in a democracy.

URGENT: This Thursday, Oct. 26, at 10 a.m. in Room 412 East of the Wisconsin State Capitol Building in Madison, the Assembly Committee on Colleges and Universities will hold a public hearing on the bill (Assembly Bill 551). The legislation is sponsored by several representatives, both Republican and Democratic, but it is IMPERATIVE that we show how important this bill is for our students. If at all possible, please help out by doing AT LEAST one of the following in the next couple days.

ATTEND THE HEARING

If it is at all possible for you (or any of your students or former students or anyone else who is supportive) to attend, it would mean a LOT to have more numbers involved. Those in attendance may share some brief testimony outlining their reasons for supporting the legislation. See some suggestions HERE and HERE.

EMAIL STATEMENTS TO THE COMMITTEE CHAIR AND OTHERS

The chair of the committee is Rep. David Murphy (R-Greenville). If you (or any of your students or former students or anyone else who is supportive) can send messages of support for the legislation to Rep. Murphy and any of the other committee members (and maybe your own legislators) prior to the hearing on Thursday, that would be amazing. Again, find some suggestions for points to make HERE and HERE. You can find your own legislators using THIS LINK, and contacts for the committee members are below:

PROVIDE VIRTUAL SUPPORT DURING THE HEARING ON THURSDAY

Starting at 9:30 a.m. on Thursday the window will open for online testimony that should allow everyone to virtually signal support for the bill. You (or, again, any of your students or former students, etc.) can click THIS LINK to access the legislative calendar. Starting at 9:30 a.m. on Thursday the listing for that day labeled “Colleges and Universities” should provide an option for online-only testimony. Please consider having anyone interested jump in, if they can.

USE THE BILL TO START OR CONTINUE DISCUSSIONS WITH YOUR STUDENTS

The hearing for the legislation may not only help enshrine their rights in state law but also provide a chance to discuss history in the making. Use this as an opportunity to have students research or discuss New Voices laws (the Student Press Law Center is an excellent resource for this). What are the benefits to such legislation? Why is it important? What are conditions like for students at your school?

  • If you or any students would like to write statements in support of the New Voices bill or explanations of ways they have experienced restrictions on their expression, feel free to send them along to New Voices Wisconsin (newvoiceswisconsin@gmail.com) or to the Wisconsin Journalism Education Association (wisconsinjea@gmail.com). Thoughts on this topic may also obviously just be written up and shared in-class, if you prefer.

STAY INVOLVED

Feel free to share this email or information with any students or others you know who may be interested!

A police raid on the Marion County Record’s newspaper office is both a violation of the First Amendment and a case study in astounding stupidity

ABC’s story on the raid, along with actual footage of the raid. 

THE LEAD: The entire force of the Marion, Kansas, police department, along with backup from county sheriff’s deputies raided the newsroom of the Marion County Record on Friday, turning this town of 2,000 people into a battleground for the First Amendment:

A search warrant shows police were looking for evidence that a reporter had run an improper computer search to confirm an accurate report that a local business owner applying for a liquor license had lost her driver’s license over a DUI.

The owner and publisher of the Record, Eric Meyer, along with First Amendment advocates and journalism organizations from across the country, have said the raid went too far.

Police seized computers, cellphones and reporting materials from the newspaper, its reporters and the home of the publisher. Meyer said police injured a reporter’s finger while taking away her cellphone.

 

THE BASIC BACKGROUND: The newspaper staff and restaurant owner Kari Newell had a bit of a beef when Newell had its journalists removed her establishment during a public meet and greet  with U.S. Rep. Jake LaTurner.

Shortly after that, the paper received a tip about Newell’s criminal record:

A confidential source contacted the newspaper, Meyer said, and provided evidence that Newell had been convicted of drunken driving and continued to use her vehicle without a driver’s license. The criminal record could jeopardize her efforts to obtain a liquor license for her catering business.

A reporter with the Marion Record used a state website to verify the information provided by the source. But Meyer suspected the source was relaying information from Newell’s husband, who had filed for divorce. Meyer decided not to publish a story about the information, and he alerted police to the situation.

“We thought we were being set up,” Meyer said.

Police contacted Newell, who alleged the paper had “illegally obtained” information about her, thus leading to the charges against the paper, as well as the raid on the newsroom and multiple private homes.

 

FIRST-AMENDMENT FALLOUT: The amendment allows for freedom of the press and prohibits governmental interference in the gathering and dissemination of the news, with only a few extreme circumstances warranting this level of aggression.  To put this in perspective, former President Richard Nixon didn’t even stoop to this level against the New York Times in relation to the Pentagon Papers situation, so if you can make Tricky Dick look restrained, your actions are pretty egregious.

More than 30 media organizations signed on to a letter from the Reporters Committee For Freedom Of The Press, condemning the raid, stating “there appears to be no justification for the breadth and intrusiveness of the search—particularly when other investigative steps may have been available—and we are concerned that it may have violated federal law strictly limiting federal, state, and local law enforcement’s ability to conduct newsroom searches.”

The Marion Police Department is defending its actions via a Facebook post, explaining that, while, yes, in most cases they should use a subpoena, and yes, in most cases, they should be less aggressive and no, they really can’t tell you WHY they did what they did, these extraordinary measures were necessary. Now, stop asking so many questions and go outside and play…

 

READ THIS NOW: Here’s an interview with the newspaper’s owner, Eric Meyer, via The Handbasket that both explains what happened in the raid as well as some backstory on the paper’s investigation into Police Chief Gideon Cody.

The paper was looking into allegations that Cody retired from his previous post to dodge potential charges of sexual misconduct, which could have led to punishment from that department.

 

THIS STUPIDITY GOES TO 11: A few random thoughts that explain how truly stupid this situation is…

  • Astounding Level of Stupid, Part I: The paper DIDN’T run anything on Newell, instead turning the tip over to the police. If the paper had ACTUALLY COMMITTED A CRIME, would the staffers have called the cops and made a point of alerting them to it? That has the same internal logic as telling the cop who pulled you over, “Officer, I know I was going a little fast, but it’s only because I need to get this trunkload of heroin to Fat Jimmy’s criminal hideout before 5 p.m.”
  • Astounding Level of Stupid, Part II: After the paper told the police about the situation, the police told Newell about the situation and Newell then complained about the paper at a city council meeting. This prompted the paper to run a story that corrected record about the situation. In short, if Newell had said nothing, nobody would likely have known anything about this entire issue. Now, half the planet knows about Newell and her DUI.
  • Astounding Level of Stupid, Part III: The easiest way to know this situation has no merit is this quote from the chief and follow up paraphrase: “I believe when the rest of the story is available to the public, the judicial system that is being questioned will be vindicated,” Mr. Cody said. He declined to discuss the investigation in detail. Wait… Where have I heard someone say that before? Oh, yeah! Here, and here, and here… Oh, hell, just Google “I will be vindicated” or “The truth will come out” and then look for a follow up story that involves the length of the prison term involved…

 

DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE: This is the case of trying to kill a fly with a sledgehammer, and it’s not even clear if a fly was there to be killed.

  • Newell alleged that the paper had “illegally obtained” private information about her DUI arrest, offering no real proof that a) the paper did so or b) how she knew how the paper supposedly illegally did anything. If an allegation this flimsy is all it takes to get the police to raid a home or business, I have a list of folks who are in for a bad week…
  • Information is not “private” just because you don’t like people knowing about it. Embarrassing private details CAN be the source of legal wrangling when publicly exposed, but that’s not this. I’m sure Newell isn’t thrilled that people know about her DUI, suspended license and more, but it’s a matter of public record as a criminal offense.
    • Put another way: If I blogged about the various noises and phrases Amy utters while we have sex, that would fit the “private information” area and she could have legal options of a punitive nature. However, the police report related to how she murdered me for disclosing those noises and phrases on the blog would NOT be private, as police reports are public records. Make sense?

    • Information is also fair game for journalists when they receive it through open-record searches, news tips and other similar things the paper is said to have done here. Even IF (big IF) someone else had done something illegal to find information about Newell and then provided it to the newspaper, the law dictates that the paper is free of wrongdoing as long as it didn’t take part in the illegal acts.

More on this will clearly become part of the blog as more on this becomes available…