The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has offered pro bono legal services to BenitoLink. Small, nonprofit newsrooms throughout the country will benefit greatly from this offer. Many newsrooms without the financial support that corporate or large businesses have can be wiped out by a single lawsuit. For example, at BenitoLink, we have a $10,000 insurance deductible to cover the cost of if and when we were to have a lawsuit. This deductible needs to be paid whether the case is frivolous or legitimate. It is easy to deduce why small newsrooms ultimately chose to avoid confrontation when the cost for defense can be so high.
The Reporters Committee news release that came to BenitoLink with the offer for legal help explained, “The Reporters Committee regularly files friend-of-the-court briefs and its attorneys represent journalists and news organizations pro bono in court cases that involve First Amendment freedoms, the newsgathering rights of journalists and access to public information.”
BenitoLink was contacted by Flavie Fuentes in late October and the arrangement was finalized in November.
The news release announcing her hire provided details on Fuentes’ background,“Fuentes joins the Reporters Committee from the Thomson Reuters Foundation, where she oversaw the global pro bono service, TrustLaw, in North America and the Caribbean. For three years, she managed the service’s core activities, focused on the foundation’s media freedom activities, and collaborated with key international players such as the Committee to Protect Journalists, Media Defence, and UNESCO.”
About the task ahead, Fuentes said, “As a lawyer trained in human rights, the vital importance of a free press as one of the pillars of democratic societies has always been fully evident to me,” Fuentes said. “Building out this program, at the crossroads of the nonprofit, private, and legal sectors, is both an outstanding challenge and exciting promise for freedom of the press in the U.S. I trust this new initiative will help increase journalists’ and newsrooms’ legal awareness, support them with their legal needs, and strengthen media freedom at large,”Fuentes said.
The Reporters Committee is available to coach reporters on how to file for public a records request, also known as a Freedom of Information Act request (FOIA) with more success. If reporters do not fill out their request properly, publicly funded agencies can avoid giving out the full information. For example, elected officials use different systems of communication like texting, phone or email. By not including all systems in the FOIA request, reporters may not get the all the internal communication they seek.
The Reporter’s Committee will also review BenitoLink investigative articles prior to publishing, helping to ensure we have done a thorough and careful job as reporters. BenitoLink Executive Director Leslie David said, “BenitoLink intends to continue helping youth learn about the profession, so this kind of assistance is very valuable on an educational level and we can protect the trust we have developed with our readers.
Protecting Journalists Pro Bono Program was launched in 2020 by Microsoft and the law firm Davis Wright Tremaine in the states of California and Washington.
“This program makes pro bono legal services available to reporters and non-profit newsrooms that cannot otherwise afford legal representation. This new program will be an important addition and expansion to the legal rights projects already underway, including those of the Reporters Committee, which has for decades served U.S. journalists and helped organize previous legal needs surveys,” said Jonathan Keeling with the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN), an organization that supported BenitoLink and other nonprofit newsrooms.
INN is partially funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. BenitoLink got its initial start-up funding of $50,000 for three years from the Knight Foundation. The BenitoLink team is thankful for the ongoing support from both the Knight Foundation and INN, as our nonprofit newsroom prepares to celebrate its tenth year in 2022. The Protecting Journalists Pro Bono Program is another example of the tremendous effort these organizations are making to help small nonprofit (public service) newsrooms like BenitoLink flourish. INN and the Knight Foundation are also foundations that support “NewsMatch”, which will contribute $13,000 this year for BenitoLink’s fall Pledge of Champions campaign.
