Hinds County judge orders Clarksdale newspaper to remove editorial, alarming press advocates

JACKSON, Miss. – by Taylor Vance (Mississippi Today) A Mississippi judge ordered a newspaper to remove an editorial criticizing the mayor of Clarksdale and city leaders after the officials sued the news outlet, leading press advocates to criticize the order as one of the most egregious First Amendment violations in recent years. 

Without a hearing for the newspaper, Hinds County Chancellor Crystal Wise Martin issued a temporary restraining order against the Clarksdale Press Register on Tuesday after the news outlet wrote a Feb. 8 editorial titled “Secrecy, Deception Erode Public Trust.” 

The column criticized the city for not sending the newspaper a notice about a meeting city commissioners held over a proposed effort to ask the state Legislature for permission to enact a local tax on alcohol, marijuana and tobacco. 

As of Thursday morning, the news outlet had removed the editorial from its website, but Wyatt Emmerich, the newspaper’s owner, told Mississippi Today that he intended to fight the judge’s order in court, which he called “absolutely astounding.” 

“There wasn’t a hearing over this or anything,” Emmerich said. “We haven’t even been served with process.”

Clarksdale Mayor Chuck Espy, a Democrat, and the Board of Commissioners filed the petition in Hinds County, calling the editorial “libelous’ and saying the editorial would bring “immediate and irreparable injury” to the city.

“(The editorial’s) statements could be reasonably understood as declaring or implying that the ‘deceptive’ reason he was not given notice of the meeting is provable through someone in the community willing to reveal promises made by the Board members in exchange for votes or in the process of time,” the city’s petition reads. 

The litigation stems from a special-called meeting the board conducted. State law requires public bodies to post a notice of a special meeting in a public place and on the city’s website, if they have one, at least one hour before the meeting. 

The state’s Open Meetings Act also requires public bodies to email a notice of the meeting to media outlets and citizens who have asked to be placed on the city’s email distribution list. 

The Clarksdale city clerk, Laketha Covington, filed an affidavit saying she did post the meeting notice at City Hall. However, she admitted she forgot to send out an email notice about the special meeting but that it was a simple mistake and not intentional.

Charlie Mitchell is the former executive editor of the Vicksburg Post and is an attorney. He is an assistant professor at the University of Mississippi’s School of Journalism and New Media, where he has taught media law for years. He told Mississippi Today there were so many issues with the judge’s order that he didn’t even “know where to start.” 

The municipality is suing the media outlet over defamation, which is typically used when individuals or businesses believe their reputation has been harmed. But government bodies, according to Mitchell, are “defamation-proof and always have been.” 

“The First Amendment allows restraint of expression, including by the media, only extremely rarely and only when there is clear evidence of immediate and irreparable risk to the public — such as blocking publication that would identify confidential informants,” Mitchell said. 

For decades, state and federal courts have held that news outlets criticizing government actions through editorials are protected speech. But there have been attempts to silence local news outlets in recent years. 

In 2023, a Kansas police department raided a newspaper’s office and its owner’s home after alleging the outlet potentially committed identity theft over its report on a local business owner’s driving record. 

Layne Bruce, the executive director of the Mississippi Press Association, wrote in a statement that the organization’s leadership stands with the newspaper and is strongly opposed to the judge’s order. 

“The Press Association feels this is an egregious overreach and that it clearly runs counter to First Amendment rights,” Bruce said 

The judge scheduled a full hearing on the litigation for 9:30 a.m. on February 27.

Mississippi Today first published this article. The Vicksburg Daily News republishes it here under a Creative Commons license.