The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

This post originally appeared in The Nuance, the Reporters Committee’s newsletter on legal and policy issues at the forefront of a free press. Sign up today! Last month marked 10 years since the federal Freedom of Information Act was last amended by Congress. At the time, the transparency reforms signed into law by then-President Barack Obama were expected to make it easier for members of the press and public to use FOIA to access records held by federal agencies.

Vivian Rong is a Communications intern at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Vivian is a rising senior at Harvard College studying Philosophy. She is an Associate Magazine Editor of The Harvard Crimson, formerly serving as an Editor-at-Large. Previously, she was the 2025 summer fellow at Harvard Magazine and has worked with Swartz-Swidler, LLC, a plaintiff-oriented employment boutique law firm in New Jersey.

Journalist Michael Balter had been covering the Croton-Harmon Union Free School District for several months when school officials went silent in the spring of 2024. The school district in Westchester County, New York, which had initially congratulated Balter on the launch of his publication, The Croton Chronicle, had stopped responding to his requests for comment and appeared to have excluded him from its press release distributions. To Balter, the snubbing felt like retaliation for his reporting.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press is urging the Federal Communications Commission to find that interviews on ABC’s daytime talk show “The View” are exempt from an agency rule that requires broadcasters to give equal air time to opposing political candidates. In public comments submitted to the FCC on June 22, 2026, the Reporters Committee addresses the agency’s ongoing inquiry into whether “The View” violated what is known as the equal time rule.

The 2026 Freedom of the Press Awards will be held on Oct. 14, 2026, at the Ziegfeld Ballroom in New York. Please see our sponsorship brochure to reserve and/or purchase sponsorships, tables, tickets, and advertisements, or to make a donation in support of the 2026 Freedom of the Press Awards.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press today announced the recipients of the 2026 Freedom of the Press Awards, which recognize the accomplishments of leaders in the news media and legal fields whose work embodies the values of the First Amendment.

Case Number: 76CI1:24cv00087 Court: Washington County Circuit Court Client: Mississippi Today Background: In 2005, 15-year-old King Young Brown Jr. was convicted in connection with the 2002 killing of a 6-year-old girl in Greenville, Mississippi, after two mistrials resulted in hung juries. Brown, who has maintained his innocence, is currently serving two consecutive sentences in prison: 30 years for rape and 20 years for manslaughter.

Case Number: 1:26-cv-01855 Court: U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Client: Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press Background: In March 2026, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press filed Freedom of Information Act requests seeking records from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as several of its components, related to the arrests of three independent journalists: Georgia Fort, Don Lemon, and Shane Bollman.

This post will be updated as more details for the conference become available. Reporters Committee attorneys will participate in an array of sessions at the 2026 Investigative Reporters and Editors conference in National Harbor, Maryland, next week. Check out a list of sessions featuring Reporters Committee attorneys below, and view the full schedule here.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press is suing the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for access to records that could help shed light on the federal government’s arrests of three independent journalists following their coverage of a Minnesota protest earlier this year.