Research Guides : First Amendment: Blogs and Current Awareness

Centers

ACLU Free Speech
Protecting free speech means protecting a free press, the democratic process and diversity of thought, The ACLU has worked since 1920 to ensure that freedom of speech is protected for everyone.
ACLU Religion & Belief
The ACLU strives to safeguard the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty by ensuring that laws and governmental practices neither promote religion nor interfere with its free exercise.
First Amendment Center
The center serves as a forum for the study and exploration of free-expression issues, including freedom of speech, of the press and of religion, and the rights to assemble and to petition the government.
Freedom Forum
The Freedom Forum, based in Washington, D.C., is a nonpartisan foundation that champions the First Amendment as a cornerstone of democracy, and is the principal funder of the Newseum and Newseum Institute.
Pennsylvania Center for the First Amendment
A leading national research center about the First Amendment housed in the College of Communications at Penn State.

State of the First Amendment
Every year the First Amendment Center of the Newseum Institute conducts the State of the First Amendment survey, which examines Americans’ views on freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly and petition, and samples their opinions on contemporary First Amendment issues.

Stings and Scams: ‘Fake News,’ the First Amendment, and the New Activist Journalism Constitutional law, technological innovations, and the rise of a cultural “right to know” have recently combined to yield “fake news,” as illustrated by an anti-abortion citizen-journalist sting operation that scammed Planned Parenthood. We find that the First Amendment, as construed by the Supreme Court, offers scant protection for activist journalists to go undercover to uncover wrongdoing, while providing substantial protection for the spread of falsehoods. By providing activists the means to reach sympathetic slices of the public, the emergence of social media has returned journalism to its roots in political activism, at the expense of purportedly objective and truthful investigative reporting. But the rise of “truthiness” — that is, falsehoods with the ring of truth, diffused through new forms of communication — threatens the integrity of the media. How to respond to these contradictions is a growing problem for advocates of free speech and liberal values more generally.