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Free Speech & the Press blog
Ida B. Wells and the Pamphlet That Made Lynching a National Scandal After a mob killed her friend Thomas Moss in 1892, Ida B. Wells counted the dead, published the numbers, lost her press and changed how America saw lynching. Incorporation, or How the Bill of Rights Came to Bind the States The Bill of Rights once limited only Washington. Here is how the Fourteenth Amendment, a 1925 sedition case and decades of rulings made it bind your state and city too. Red Lion, the Fairness Doctrine and the Rule Broadcasters Fought for Decades A 1964 radio attack on a small-town Pennsylvania station led to a unanimous 1969 ruling, a 1987 repeal and a debate about fairness on the air that never ended. Section 230, the 1996 Liability Shield, and the Fight to Rewrite It A 1995 libel ruling against Prodigy pushed Congress to write Section 230. Here is what the law protects, what it never covered, and how the fight to change it splits both parties. The Church Committee of 1975 and the Secrets It Pulled Into the Light In 1975 a Senate committee exposed FBI campaigns against activists and CIA plots to kill foreign leaders. What it found, how it worked, and the reforms we still rely on. The Communications Act of 1934 and the Idea That the Airwaves Belong to the Public How a 1934 law made broadcasters trustees of public airwaves, why the public-interest standard faded, and what the old bargain still offers a democracy.