Twitter sues to block a Department of Homeland Security order to reveal who is behind an account critical of Trump administration policies. Facebook adds an ”educational tool” it says will help users discern fake news, and Google gives fact-checking sites more prominence in search and news results. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is cited as another Trump administration official who minimizes availability to journalists. -Dru Menaker, Chief Operating Officer

DARE: Daily Alert on Rights and Expression

PEN America’s take on today’s most pressing threats to free expression

U.S.

The government is demanding to know who this Trump critic is. Twitter is suing to keep it a secret.
Twitter filed a lawsuit Thursday to block an order from the Department of Homeland Security that seeks to reveal the user of an account who has been critical of the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
WASHINGTON POST

Facebook adding ‘educational tool’ to help users spot fake news
Does Facebook really care whether the stories at the top of your news feed are accurate? The company is trying to convince skeptics that the answer is yes. Facebook’s latest step is an “educational tool” that will pop up at the top of the news feed.
CNN

Google adds fact-check findings to search and news results
Beginning today, Google will present richer information from fact-checking sites like PolitiFact and Snopes when they show up in search and news results worldwide. Those sites will be able to display richer information on Google, including directly noting whether they’ve judged a claim to be true, false, or somewhere in between.
THE VERGE

Activists Criticize China’s Human Rights Record Ahead of Trump-Xi Jinping Meeting
PEN America and Students for a Free Tibet International are among seven groups asking President Donald Trump to voice human rights concerns with Chinese President Xi Jinping when they meet in Florida beginning Thursday.
NBC

Growing Tensions Between DeVos Education Department & Reporters
As of early April, journalists’ access to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos – and to timely responses from the agency she now runs – have become something of a hot-button issue. DeVos takes press questions at events only occasionally, has yet to grant a formal interview with a major national education reporter, and heads a department that only intermittently provides answers in a timely manner.
KAPPA ONLINE

 
Global

An Australian Journalist Has Been Arrested On Manus Island Detention Center
A photo was taken on Wednesday of journalist Nikala Sim having lunch with Manus Island detainees. Two days later, a woman believed to be Sim was placed under “a kind of house arrest” by immigration officials and told she would be “deported” on Friday afternoon.
BUZZFEED

Russia bans images of Putin linked to ‘gay clown’ meme
It is now illegal in Russia to distribute any images that depict President Vladimir Putin wearing makeup and implying he is gay. The Justice Ministry in Moscow has included one of them among a registry of “extremist materials,” along with others such as anti-Semitic and racist pictures and slogans.
CNN

Journalists Complain of Harassment in Sudan’s Red Sea State
Journalists in Sudan’s Red Sea state have accused the state government of practicing a policy of silencing journalists by banning them from writing in the state press, filing complaints against them in court, and summoning them to the security offices.
RADIO DABANGA

Emergence of digital media prompts minor improvement in Hong Kong press freedom, watchdog says
An increase in media diversity has marginally improved press freedom in Hong Kong last year, an annual survey by industry watchdog Hong Kong Journalists Association suggested, attributing the slight improvement in conditions to the emergence of digital media outlets.
HONG KONG FREE PRESS

Violence in Mexico is ‘Out of Control’ Say Experts After Journalist, Priest Killings
The killings of three journalists and two priests in Mexico last month forced a newspaper to close this week and have provoked national and international condemnation of the government’s failure to provide justice and security.
CNS

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