Despite the Obama administration's recent legal settlement to begin releasing White House visitor logs later this year, it has denied Judicial Watch's recent request for those same records. "In refusing to abide by FOIA law, the Secret Service advanced the erroneous claim that the records belong to the Obama White House, not the agency, and are therefore may be kept secret under the Presidential Records Act," Judicial Watch says in a release.

Continue ReadingSecret Service Denies Access to White House Visitor Logs

Phoenix Media, the parent company of the Phoenix alt-weeklies in Boston, Portland and Providence, filed a lawsuit yesterday alleging that Facebook infringed on a patent held by the company's Tele-Publishing Inc. (TPI) division for publishing personal pages on online dating services. A Facebook spokesperson tells the Boston Globe the suit is "without merit," something Phoenix Media executive editor Peter Kadzis disputes. "The intellectual concepts that Facebook uses to give its users maximum flexibility of choice while maintaining the highest level of privacy replicate/duplicate those developed by TPI many years ago," he says. "It's not a frivolous suit."

Continue ReadingPhoenix Media Sues Facebook

A judge has dismissed former Stanford Group Company vice president Tiffany Angelle's defamation claim against the Lafayette, La., paper. Angelle had sued the Independent over a story that reported she had given a reluctant investor a Rolex watch and a lavish trip to keep his money in Stanford, which was shut down earlier this year by the Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly perpetrating an $8 billion investment scam. In making his ruling, the judge noted that Independent editorial director Leslie Turk, who was also named in the suit, "reasonably relied on a confidential informant whom she believed to be telling the truth and confirmed the accuracy of the source's statement by making a second call to [the confidential source]."

Continue ReadingJudge Dismisses Defamation Suit Against The Independent Weekly

The brief filed yesterday asks the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a highly unusual opinion issued earlier this year by a panel of the same court, which ruled that the Texas Open Meetings Act (TOMA) violates the First Amendment. The case began when two former city councilors in Alpine, Tex., were indicted under TOMA for discussing city business via private e-mail messages. Although the charges were dropped, the politicians filed a lawsuit charging that TOMA violated their right to free speech. AAN joined two dozen other media organizations in signing onto the amicus brief, which was written and organized by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

Continue ReadingAAN Joins Amicus in Support of Texas’ Open Meeting Law

In what special counsel to the president Norm Eisen calls "a historic new policy," the Obama Administration announced this morning that "(a)side from a small group of appointments that cannot be disclosed because of national security imperatives or their necessarily confidential nature (such as a visit by a possible Supreme Court nominee), the record of every visitor who comes to the White House for an appointment, a tour, or to conduct business will be released." The administration also announced that it settled a lawsuit demanding specific visitor records, "including those dating from the Bush administration."

Continue ReadingWhite House Opens Visitors Logs

Ohio state Sen. Kevin Coughlin has been dismissed as a defendant in James Renner's lawsuit over his termination by the Scene, according to the Akron Beacon Journal. The alt-weekly has requested the rest of the suit be tossed out as well; the judge is reportedly considering that request now. Renner's suit alleges he was unjustly fired over an unpublished story about an alleged affair involving Coughlin and a former campaign aide.

Continue ReadingJudge Removes Politician from Lawsuit by Ex-Scene Reporter

A judge ruled this week that model Liskula Cohen is entitled to learn the identity of the person who wrote the blog Skanks in NYC, which referred to Cohen as a "skank" and "ho." The judge said that the blog potentially defamed Cohen, rejecting the blogger's argument that the comments were mere opinion and hyperbole.

Continue ReadingJudge Rules Blogger’s Identity Must be Revealed