Freedom Of The Press, Plainly Explained

Do you want to know what “freedom of the press” protects when you hit publish, post a video, or record a public official? We sit down with Professor Eugene Volokh, a leading First Amendment scholar, to draw a clear map through press rights, speech doctrine, and the practical rules that shape what you can say—and how you can gather the facts to say it.

We start with a plain-English definition: press freedom, not just credentialed journalists, belongs to everyone. That means the right to use mass communication tools—from the printing press to social platforms—without prior licensing or punishment. We break down where the law draws rigid boundaries, focusing on defamation: the difference between opinion and false factual claims, how libel and slander work, and why public figures face the “actual malice” standard. Then we turn to news gathering, highlighting the widely recognized right to record police and other officials performing their duties in public, and why that right is essential to any meaningful freedom to publish.

As the conversation moves online, we connect historical principles to modern technology. The same rules that governed pamphlets and newspapers now apply to tweets, blogs, livestreams, and uploads: you can’t publish actual threats or defamatory lies, but you can share opinions, criticism, and truthful reporting. We also show how courts often treat speech and press as one broader freedom of communication, and we point listeners to accessible resources that summarize what courts actually hold. By the end, you’ll know how to avoid legal pitfalls, assert your right to record and report, and understand why a vibrant press—professional and citizen—keeps democratic life honest.

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Chapters

• 1:34 Guest Introduction And Credentials
• 2:31 Defining Freedom Of The Press
• 3:32 Defamation, Libel, And Slander
• 4:54 The Right To Record Officials
• 6:12 From Printing Press To The Internet
• 8:04 Cases And Reading Recommendations
• 9:50 Speech And Press As One Freedom
• 10:25 Closing Thanks

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:48

Today we're joined by Eugene Vulcan, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and distinguished professor emeritus at UCLA School of Law. He's taught the First Amendment, free speech, firearms regulations, and more. Before that, he clerked for Justice Sandra Davor at the U.S. Supreme Court and Alex Kaczynski on the Ninth Circuit. He is the author of textbooks like The First Amendment and Related Statutes and Academic Legal Writing, and the founder of the legal blog, the Vumbler Conspiracy, shaping the national debate on free speech and civic life. You might also know his YouTube series, Free Speech Rules, where he dives deep into how free expression works in today's world. Professor Vumlik brings grounded, thoughtful perspective on what free speech really means in our constitutional democracy and why it still matters so much. Professor Venlock, thank you so much for being here today. Today we're talking about the part of the First Amendment that deals with freedom of the press. So, for our listeners, what is freedom of the press?

SPEAKER_01: 1:55

So, freedom of the press is the freedom of people to speak out using mass communication technology. It was originally the press meant printing press. It was the freedom of people, whether they are professional journalists or just ordinary citizens, to use the printing press without the government demanding a license or the government punishing them for it and the like. Now it's of course been extended to the modern airs, the printing press, such as the Internet, for example. There are, of course, uh exceptions to the freedom of the press, as with the freedom of speech. So, for example, there's an exception for defamation, for libel, false statements, especially knowingly false statements about particular people or organizations that damage their reputation. There's an exception if you publish true threats of violence, if you uh put out leaflets that threaten someone's life. Also, the freedom of the press includes some amount of freedom to gather the news and not just to report it, although the exact boundaries of the freedom of news gathering are less well settled.

SPEAKER_00: 3:02

Can you, for our listeners, you talked about libel and defamation? What what are those words mean?

SPEAKER_01: 3:11

So defamation means basically, I oversimplify here, but basically statements that are false, the factual assertions that are false and damaging to the reputation of a person or a company or a nonprofit organization, um often it requires that the statements be knowingly false or at least negligently false. Uh defamation is divided basically into two sorts. There's libel, which is written, and slander, which is oral. So that's an exception to the First Amendment, defamation, that even though speech about people is generally protected, opinions about people are generally protected, true statements about them are generally protected, false statements to damage the reputation will, under many circumstances, be not protected by the First Amendment.

SPEAKER_00: 4:01

And then when you talk about gathering information, can you give us an example of how that is freedom of the press? Because I think of press as I read something in my newspaper or maybe online, but how do you mean by gathering information?

SPEAKER_01: 4:15

Well, so if you're if you're in if you want to read something or see something online in the newspaper, on television, someone's got to put it out, right? And especially if it is, for example, a recording, someone has to record it. So for example, there have been uh uh many cases recently, none from the U.S. Supreme Court, but from lower courts, and pretty unanimous on this, that say that people have the right to record public officials, especially say police officers, but not only, in public places, performing their public duties. So if uh if a uh city or state has some ordinance or statute that limits people's ability to video and audio record, then that may very well violate the First Amendment rights of news gathering. And why? Why are such rights recognized? Because in order to have something to say, you have to be able to compose it. And if that thing that you're trying to say is here is the here is the actual actual scene as we've captured it or the actual uh statement as we've recorded it, you need to be able to record it.

SPEAKER_00: 5:26

So you talked about too, like, you know, when this first started, it was really about utilization of a printing press. But now that we live in this really online world, what does freedom of the press mean for an online world?

SPEAKER_01: 5:39

Well, it means the freedom to use new mass communications technology. It's a very close cousin of the freedom of speech. The framers understood the freedom of speech as this traditional, long-standing, basic natural right to express your views. Uh and of course, before the invention of the printing press, in order to do that, you had to talk to people. Maybe freedom of the press might have included writing things down by hand, but it wasn't a tremendously efficient way of communicating to large groups of people. Once the printing press was invented, over the centuries, the English, and then eventually the Americans and many other countries as well, but our legal system descends to America from England, recognized that the freedom of speech ought to also include the freedom to use this new technology of the printing press, which is an especially effective way of communicating one's ideas and communicating facts. So so that's how how it emerged. Unsurprisingly, the exceptions, for example, for First Amendment protection are pretty similar for freedom of speech and freedom of the press. You can't say things that damage people's reputation and are false state factual assertions. Generally speaking, again, I oversimplify here. Likewise, you can't write them. You can't write threats of illegal violence against people. You can't print them, you can't tweet them out, likewise you can't say them. So the freedom of speech and freedom of the press are both facets of the freedom of communication, the freedom to express your views, to convey ideas, to convey facts.

SPEAKER_00: 7:18

Are there any, you know, for people who are interested in freedom of the press, are there any Supreme Court cases that really stick out to you that you think, you know, for just somebody who's like, this sounds really interesting. I'd like to know more maybe about what the Supreme Court has said.

SPEAKER_01: 7:33

You know, I think there are lots of books out there about freedom of the press. Uh, and there certainly are lots of cases, but there's not one particular case that really uh captures well this very complicated subject.

SPEAKER_00: 7:48

What books would you suggest that maybe somebody start with?

SPEAKER_01: 7:52

Well, I mean, there there are very many different books that uh that have been um that have been written on various aspects of freedom of the press. Um I I particularly like uh uh books that are that kind of convey, convey basically the facts. Um there is, for example, let us say the facts being what the court has actually decided. There are interesting books that talk a lot about stories, there are interesting books that talk a lot about theory, but uh but I'm particularly interested in uh uh in books that basically say here are the rules. And let me just find one. There is a book uh in the understanding series, which is basically aimed at uh at uh lawyer at law students, but I think is uh accessible to everybody, called Understanding the First Amendment. It's it's an attempt to just kind of summarize what the legal rules are. And if you're interested in those legal rules, I think if you if you start with that book, that that'll be a good place to start.

SPEAKER_00: 8:55

And I kind of heard you say that, you know, the freedom of speech is that closed cushion we're talking about, like the freedom of communication, the freedom of expression. So would it be fair to say like sometimes it's hard to just look at freedom of the press because it's so intertwined within the First Amendment and the ability to express yourself?

unknown: 9:15

Sure.

SPEAKER_01: 9:15

There are many court cases that even aren't really completely clear on whether they're applying the freedom of speech or freedom of the press. There are cases that talk about freedom of speech as just a stand-in for freedom of speech, press, assembly, petition, all four are protected by the First Amendment. So, yes, if you want to understand the law of freedom of the press, you should also understand the law of the freedom of speech.

SPEAKER_00: 9:39

Professor Vollock, thank you so much for giving us just a quick overview of freedom of the press. We really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01: 9:46

Very much my pleasure.