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Judge Tosses Charges Against Journalist Who Published Docs Leaked To Her By A Police Officer

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A police department's retaliatory arrest of a citizen journalist has dead-ended with a courtroom loss. Priscilla Villarreal -- better known as "Lagordiloca" to her thousands of Facebook fans -- was arrested after she published information given to her by police officer Barbara Goodman. The info included the name of Border Patrol agent who had committed suicide -- info never officially released by the Border Patrol.While the proper target for Texas prosecutors would have been the officer leaking sensitive info, they decided to pursue Villarreal instead, issuing an arrest warrant for "misuse of official information." Publishing leaks has never really troubled the courts before, usually falling well within the confines of the First Amendment. But prosecutors argued the "misuse" occurred when Villarreal "profited" from it by "gaining popularity" with her exclusive leak."Lagordiloca" operated outside the mainstream, publishing and streaming interactions with officers live to her Facebook page. It's apparent many officers didn't care for her reporting, and this misuse of a "misuse" law seemed like a quick and dirty way to shut her up. It didn't work. As Jason Buch reports for the San Antonio Express-News, a judge has tossed the charges against Villareal, finding them unconstitutional.

A judge in Laredo on Wednesday threw out the charges against the social media personality known as La Gordiloca.State District Judge Monica Z. Notzon ruled that part of the law police used to arrest Priscilla Villarreal is unconstitutionally vague.
The judge didn't go so far as to find the publication of leaked info protected under the First Amendment, however. This means prosecutors can still go after journalists for publishing "sensitive" info. But it probably wouldn't be prudent to do so. The law itself has been ruled unconstitutional, meaning it will need a rewrite before it can be pressed into service to silence critics of the government. No injunction has been issued, which means it's still technically legal to arrest journalists for leaks, even if a dismissal is all but guaranteed. This narrow ruling doesn't exactly discourage retaliatory arrests.The District Attorney is choosing not to appeal this decision, but still believes his office was justified in approving the arrest warrant for the Laredo PD.
“We believe that the law was there, was on our side. We applied the law that was in the books,” Alaniz said. “The court determined it was vague and unconstitutional, and we’re making the decision not to appeal.
This is the DA granting the arresting officers the good faith exception -- based on his own terrible interpretation of the law -- presumably in hopes the judge presiding over the inevitable civil rights lawsuit will feel the same way. The DA has nothing to worry about. His immunity is pretty much unpierceable, no matter how much he twists state law to aid officers in retaliatory harassment of local journalists.And there's always a chance the state's Attorney General may issue an appeal of its own. AG Ken Paxton recently declared Texas police officers are entitled to all available footage of use of force incidents before being questioned by investigators, so he may feel inclined to attempt to erect another buffer between officers and public accountability with an appeal.

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ESPN To Combat Cord-Cutting By Putting Once Kinda Free Content Behind A New Paywall

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In reaction to cord-cutting, a very real "thing" no matter what some cable executives will tell you, ESPN has mostly employed two strategies to combat it. The first strategy has been to stick its head as far and deep into the sand as possible, virtually ignoring reality. Once that was no longer possible, the ESPN ostrich lifted its head out of the sand and squawked out a new streaming service, for which it would bill customers $5/month. In that last link, our own Karl Bode wrote:

There's every indication that ESPN's still only paying lip service to innovation. What consumers say they want is the ability to either avoid ESPN entirely, or buy ESPN the channel on a standalone basis. But it's important to point out that's not what ESPN is actually offering here. The new streaming service won't provide access to ESPN's existing channel lineup unless you have a traditional cable subscription. Without a traditional cable TV subscription, users of the app will be directed to other content they may or may not actually want.
While all of that is still mostly true, recent revelations about the new streaming service indicate that it's actually worse than Bode described. There will indeed be more content on ESPN+ that users probably do want -- such as MLB and NHL games --, much of the rest of the content offered through the service will be cannibalized from another ESPN property that has previously been kinda sorta "free" if you're a cable subscriber.
ESPN+ is also a way to get some extra money out of current subscribers, ones who might already be used to thousands of live sports over streaming. If this new service sounds a lot like ESPN3, the current online home—provided by many ISPs*—for thousands of sports that aren’t televised on ESPN’s TV channels, you’d be right.While certain aspects, like the MLB and NHL games, are brand new, one of ESPN3's main draws is a wealth of college games in lesser-watched sports or conferences, as well as expanded coverage of Grand Slam tennis and global competitions like cricket. The network has so far been vague about which leagues and games will get cannibalized from ESPN3, or how many, but ESPN did confirm that some of ESPN3's programming will change.
ESPN3 comes along with many cable television packages that include ESPN's TV channels. The content for ESPN3 has always been the sort that isn't popular enough to air on the channels, but which might interest some customers. College games and niche sports make up the bulk of the lineup. But now ESPN will remove some of that content and put it behind a $5/month paywall, asking customers used to getting this content free, bundled with their cable subscription, to instead pay another $60 per year for it. Same content, more money, all while further reducing the value of an ESPN cable subscription, where ESPN still makes most of its money.How is this a recipe for increased revenue?You'll still get ESPN3 forced on you by your cable subscription (if you have one), it will just suck a little bit harder. Most of the sports content you want will still only be available through a cable TV subscription, which more and more people do not want. And ESPN+ will cost more money, while only being moderately better in content compared with the bundled in ESPN3.This is what we call a swing and a miss.

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