An assault on the First Amendment? Yes. But also a lesson in the ethics of reporting police news.

Now here’s an interesting dilemma. A digital news organization publishes a police blotter item about an arrest. The arrest is later expunged, and the arrestee contacts the news outlet demanding that any mention of it be deleted. They refuse, though they do add a note saying that the matter had been dropped. But that’s not good enough for the arrestee, and now prosecutors are pursuing criminal charges against the two journalists for sticking by their policy against unpublishing news items.

Whew. This came to my attention recently in the form of a press release from the Freedom of the Press Foundation. The news outlet, Redbankgreen, covers Red Bank, New Jersey, and the journalists being targeted are publisher Kenny Katzgrau and reporter Brian Donohue. The journalists have a clear and unambiguous First Amendment right to publish truthful information without interference from the government, but that’s not what makes this interesting.

The arrest itself was a big nothing. In August 2024, Kyle Pietila was charged with simple assault, and in March 2025, after the charge was dropped, Redbankgreen updated the item to note that a judge had expunged it “under an order determining the arrest ‘shall be deemed to have not occurred.’” I am naming Pietila only because he is pursuing criminal charges against Redbankgreen and has thus made himself a public figure.

According to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, which is part of the Freedom of the Press Foundation:

An attorney for the journalists filed a motion to dismiss and expunge the charges on July 11, arguing that the “publication of truthful information on matters of public significance cannot be punished unless it involves a state interest of the highest order.”

“Moreover, information concerning the arrest was published prior to the expungement, and there is no requirement in law that it be removed from the publisher’s website simply because an expungement had taken place,” Bruce Rosen wrote. “The issuance of probable cause in this matter is plain legal error, this prosecution is unconstitutional and in fact unfathomable, and the matter should be promptly dismissed.”

Unconstitutional and unfathomable are good descriptions of this. Yet there are two ethical issues that need to be considered as well.

First, in recent years thoughtful news organizations have ended the practice of regurgitating the local police blotter for the entertainment of their readers. Such alleged news, to quote the late Jack Cole, serves no public purpose, and in some cases it can reinforce racial stereotypes. A few years ago I wrote about how the Keene Sentinel in New Hampshire eliminated routine police news in order to concentrate on more serious crime and broader stories about criminal justice.

Second, I think Redbankgreen acted ethically by appending the police blotter item to note that the arrest had been expunged. What’s not clear from the coverage is whether Katzgrau and Donohoe offered to engage in a milder form of unpublishing: keeping it on their website but making it invisible to search engines. A number of news organizations have done this, including The Boston Globe with Fresh Start program.

The prosecution of these two journalists is an outrage, and any officials involved should be reprimanded and punished. Nevertheless, I hope Redbankgreen’s ordeal might lead to a rethink of how they cover news from the local police.