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54 Media L. Notes 1 (2025-2026)

handle is hein.journals/mdilwnts54 and id is 1 raw text is: Headnotes This is an important time for people who teach and research journalism and mass communication law and policy to document and report on laws, policies and trends that threaten freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Yet, teaching, researching and communicating about free expression principles and rule of law can be especially challenging. Over the next year, the AEJMC Law and Policy Division will work with our members and with other organizations to recognize threats to free expression rights and to highlight efforts to provide broader understanding of freedom of speech and the press. The Law and Policy Division has already started taking steps to support our members in their teaching and research. During the division's preconference session on teaching about rule of law in 2025, Amy Kristin Sanders, John and Ann Curley Chair in First Amendment Studies at Penn State University, recommended incorporating international examples in mass communication law courses. Challenges to freedom of speech and the press span much of the globe. Our Michael Hoefges Award recipients, Michelle Gomez and Ershad Khan, presented excellent research on free expression rights in Guatemala, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Pakistan. Human rights organization, Article 19's 2025 Global Expression Report indicated that media in Guatemala were less restricted by censorship and harassment over the past year. Unfortunately, media freedom has declined in 99 of approximately 160 countries during the past decade, due to government censorship, self- censorship and/or harassment of journalists in more than half of the countries studied. Overall free expression scores in 77 of 161 countries, including the United States, have declined during the same period. [continued on next page] I VOL. 54, ISSUE 1