happy news

for actual free speech, not some weird bastardized version of that phrase

this is finally fucking over, and i’m so happy for max and the daily beast. it was a nightmare. i have refrained from speaking too much about it, and i’ll continue to keep quiet, and perhaps this helps explain why: i was involved as a defendant in a separate but related piece of litigation a few years ago (i posted this weird aggregation article so you don’t need to give the new york post clicks by visiting their website and reading the source material).

it’s hard to overstate the chilling effects of lawsuits like this on a personal level, without even getting into the macro effects they have on newsrooms and journalism etc etc — i spent 2020 in an anxiety spiral, probably acting irrationally but out of paranoia. i felt like everything i said and did was being scrutinized. i’ve avoided talking about it but it’s a big reason why i left journalism — i felt like i was a liability or like i had a scarlet letter on my resume, or just a target on my back. i felt exposed and so scared and isolated. it was intensely alienating. i’ve never experienced anything like it in my life.

i’m sure i’ve said this before, but the best (only?) good thing andrew cuomo did in 2020 was sign into law a speech-protective, amended expansion of new york’s existing anti-SLAPP legislation. the improved law allows for targeted defendants to escape bad-faith SLAPP suits quickly. without it i am confident that my plight would have been significantly more painful.

i am also so grateful to senior staff attorney jennifer nelson and the rest of the attorneys at the reporters committee for freedom of the press who help under-resourced reporters who are defendants in these lawsuits.