On July 8 CityBeat filed a federal lawsuit against government officials in the city of Cincinnati, Hamilton County, Campbell and Kenton counties in Northern Kentucky and Dearborn County in Indiana. We charged them and a coalition of local religious and nonprofit leaders led by Citizens for Community Values (CCV) of violating our First Amendment rights, conspiracy to violate our First Amendment rights and tortious interference with our business relationships.
Read John Fox’s editorial <a (published 7/9/08).
WNKU-FM News Director Craig Kopp interviews CityBeat Co-Publishers Dan Bockrath and John Fox (broadcast 6/23/08): Listen here.
Read John Fox’s editorial “Free to Be True Americans” (published 6/25/08).
Fountain Square Rally
On the evening of June 20, downtown Cincinnati’s main public space hummed with hundreds of friends and supporters of the First Amendment at the “Stand Up With CityBeat” rally. CityBeat staff gathered on the Fountain Square stage behind Co-Publisher Dan Bockrath, who read our official statement that we would not change our advertising policies to satisfy a local pressure group.
The statement is CityBeat‘s response to what happened on June 9, when a coalition of law enforcement officials, politicians and clergy organized by Citizens for Community Values held a news conference at City Hall to berate CityBeat for our adult services advertisements. They sent a letter to us to “appeal to your integrity as a corporate citizen ask that you eliminate the adult services category, and refuse to accept ads elsewhere for sexual services, in both your print and online editions.
Background
Below is more background on CCV’s interference in CityBeat‘s business practices.
Update (6/11/08): Read John Fox’s editorial, “Publicity Stunt Targets CityBeat.”
Update (6/9/08): A coalition led by Citizens for Community Values held a news conference this morning (June 9) at City Hall to announce that it would be sending a letter to CityBeat asking us to stop publishing adult-oriented classified advertisements in the paper and online. A story in this morning’s Enquirer previewed the event.
CityBeat has issued the following statement in response. If you’d like to comment on this situation, click here for discussion on CityBeat‘s Porkopolis blog.
STATEMENT ABOUT TODAY
This article appears in Jul 9-15, 2008.
