{"id":268435,"date":"2026-04-15T03:32:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T03:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/268435\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T03:32:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T03:32:10","slug":"california-tries-to-criminalize-journalism-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/268435\/","title":{"rendered":"California tries to criminalize journalism \u2014\u00a0again"},"content":{"rendered":"

A bill moving through the California Legislature<\/a> would give taxpayer-funded organizations the power to demand the removal of videos recorded in public spaces \u2014 and impose steep financial penalties on anyone who publishes them.<\/p>\n

AB 2624<\/a>, sponsored by Assemblywoman Mia Bonta (D-Oakland), is framed as protection for immigrant service providers against harassment and threats. The framing makes opposition look cruel.<\/p>\n

Bills that need moral immunity to pass tend to deserve the scrutiny they\u2019re trying to avoid.<\/p>\n

The bill extends<\/a> confidentiality and anti-doxxing protections to \u201cimmigration support services providers,\u201d grafting those provisions onto laws originally written for narrowly defined, high-risk medical contexts. <\/p>\n

A bill moving through the California Legislature would give taxpayer-funded organizations the power to demand the removal of videos recorded in public spaces \u2014 and impose steep financial penalties on anyone who publishes them. REUTERS<\/p>\n

AB 2624, sponsored by Assemblywoman Mia Bonta (D-Oakland), is framed as protection for immigrant service providers against harassment and threats. Bloomberg via Getty Images<\/p>\n

The expansion sounds measured. What it creates is a broad, vaguely-bounded shield available to any organization that can plausibly claim to serve immigrants, including outfits receiving public money. <\/p>\n

Under AB 2624, those organizations could invoke legal protections to force the removal of footage, backed by the financial threat of penalties against the person who filmed or published it. That mechanism doesn\u2019t distinguish between stalkers and a citizen journalists. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSign up for the California Morning Report newsletter\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCalifornia’s top news, sports and entertainment delivered to your inbox every day.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

The bill\u2019s critics have taken to calling it<\/a> the \u201cStop Nick Shirley Act<\/a>.\u201d Shirley is a 24-year-old YouTuber from Utah widely credited with exposing fraud in day care facilities in Minnesota. He has spent the past several months filming California hospice offices, day cares, and government-funded facilities he alleges are likewise billing for patients who don\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n

Shirley\u2019s videos have attracted tens of millions of views and congressional attention. Gov. Gavin Newsom\u2019s office has responded to Shirley by depicting him<\/a> as a predator lurking outside a day care. That\u2019s not an investigation or rebuttal, but a smear.<\/p>\n

The expansion sounds measured. What it creates is a broad, vaguely-bounded shield available to any organization that can plausibly claim to serve immigrants, including outfits receiving public money. Bloomberg via Getty Images<\/p>\n

If Shirley\u2019s footage was fiction, that\u2019s a strange amount of effort to discredit the cinematographer rather than disprove the allegations. <\/p>\n

Sacramento\u2019s position, apparently, is that the best answer to allegations of nine-figure fraud is to ridicule the person holding the camera, and then legislate the camera away.<\/p>\n

The danger in this legislation lies in the word \u201cintent.\u201d Publishing images or information connected to alleged misconduct could be construed as harassment if it risks provoking backlash against the subjects. <\/p>\n

Download The California Post App, follow us on social, and subscribe to our newsletters <\/p>\n

California Post News: Facebook<\/a>, Instagram<\/a>, TikTok<\/a>, X<\/a>, YouTube<\/a>, WhatsApp<\/a>, LinkedIn<\/a>
California Post Sports Facebook<\/a>, Instagram<\/a>, TikTok<\/a>, YouTube<\/a>, X<\/a>
California Post Opinion<\/a>
California Post Newsletters: Sign up here!<\/a>
California Post App: Download here!<\/a>
Home delivery: Sign up here!<\/a>
<\/a>Page Six Hollywood: Sign up here!<\/a><\/p>\n

Selective enforcement becomes available. Independent journalists, activists, or private citizens documenting publicly observable activity could face penalties \u2014\u00a0not for inciting violence, but for publishing findings that embarrass the wrong people. <\/p>\n

California has been here before. In 2015, anti-abortion activist David Daleiden<\/a> released undercover videos showing Planned Parenthood executives discussing fees for fetal tissue, allegedly unlawfully. <\/p>\n

California\u2019s response was to prosecute Daleiden. He became the first journalist ever criminally prosecuted under the state\u2019s recording law. Then-Attorney General Kamala Harris inherited the investigation and allowed it to continue. The state raided Daleiden\u2019s apartment in April 2016, seizing laptops, hard drives, and hundreds of hours of undercover footage, while never investigating Planned Parenthood for the alleged trafficking claims.<\/p>\n

Independent journalists, activists, or private citizens documenting publicly observable activity could face penalties. Bloomberg via Getty Images<\/p>\n

The prosecution dragged through the courts for a decade. The final charge was dismissed and the case expunged earlier this month. What California demonstrated in the Daleiden case was a willingness to use recording laws as a political instrument \u2014 targeting the messenger, while leaving the alleged violator alone. <\/p>\n

AB 2624 would encode that political instinct into law.<\/p>\n

AB 2624 builds a legal framework in which exposure itself becomes the offense. <\/p>\n

The bill\u2019s stated purpose is protection. Its practical function is leverage, available to publicly-funded organizations that would prefer their operations remain unexamined.<\/p>\n

Its most insidious feature requires no enforcement at all. Make accountability expensive enough, and most people will decide it isn\u2019t worth it. <\/p>\n

California has an expansive fraud problem, a governor who meets it with mockery, and a legislature now building the legal tools to ensure the next Nick Shirley thinks twice before pointing a camera at an alleged ghost hospice in Van Nuys<\/a>.<\/p>\n

John Mac Ghlionn is an essayist and commentator who covers politics and culture.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t