Journalists push back against parent companies’ contracts with ICE

Poynter: “More than 200 journalists at Law360, a legal news outlet, and its sister publications have signed a letter demanding that their parent company RELX drop its contract with the Department of Homeland Security. The letter, which was signed by more than 80% of the union representing editorial staff at Law360 and regulation news site MLex, states that the $22.1 million contract “raises imminent human rights concerns” given recent actions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency within DHS. The five-year contract, signed in 2021, gives DHS access to a database of public records compiled by RELX’s LexisNexis Risk Solutions. Separately, several journalists at Reuters signed on to an internal letter by employees across parent company Thomson Reuters calling on the corporation to explain “what human rights and civil liberties due diligence” it has taken in signing several contracts with DHS amounting to tens of millions of dollars. Both Thomson Reuters and RELX are massive corporations that generate billions of dollars of revenue, in part through their information and data analytics tools. Their news operations make up a comparatively small portion of their business, but some reporters are still pushing back against their companies’ actions — sometimes defying traditional expectations that journalists refrain from publicly taking partisan stances…”