Mississippi newspaper ordered to remove op-ed critical of city officials

The Clarksdale Press Register was ordered to remove an editorial from its website and other online portals on Feb. 18, 2025, after the City of Clarksdale, Mississippi, alleged the article was defamatory.

The editorial, headlined “Secrecy, deception erode public trust” — pulled from the site but archived here — was published on Feb. 8, and detailed how the mayor’s office had failed to properly notify the public of a special meeting held four days prior.

“Mayor Chuck Espy has always touted how ‘open’ and ‘transparent’ he is and he is ‘not like previous administrations of the past 30 years,’” the editorial said. While notice of the meeting was posted on the door of City Hall, it continued, “This newspaper was never notified. We know of no other media organization that was notified.”

In an affidavit, the city clerk admitted that she had not emailed the media a notice announcing the meeting, as required by state law. Floyd Ingram, publisher and editor of the Press Register, approached her after the meeting to ask about its subject, and she said that she gave him a copy of the notice, an agenda, a resolution passed during the meeting and other materials.

Chancery Court Judge Crystal Wise Martin granted the city’s motion for a temporary restraining order without allowing the newspaper to argue against it, ruling that the Press Register must unpublish the article.

“The injury in this case is defamation against public figures through actual malice in reckless disregard of the truth,” Wise Martin wrote in her order, “and interferes with their legitimate function to advocate for legislation they believe would help their municipality during this current legislative cycle.”

The city praised the ruling in a post to its official Facebook page.

“The judge ruled in our favor that a newspaper cannot tell a malicious lie and not be held liable,” Mayor Espy said. “The only thing that I ask, that no matter what you print, just let it be the truth; be it good or bad.”

City Attorney Melvin Miller II added: “The City touts this as a victory for truth. Not even newspapers can imply lies against City officials conducting city business and get away with it.”

First Amendment advocates, however, criticized the decision. Seth Stern, director of advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation, said in a statement that an order compelling a newspaper to take down an editorial critical of the government was blatantly unconstitutional.

“The underlying lawsuit here appears frivolous for any number of reasons,” Stern said. “But even in constitutionally permissible defamation lawsuits, it’s been well-established law for decades that the remedy for plaintiffs is monetary damages, not censorship orders.”

Adam Steinbaugh, a First Amendment lawyer at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, also noted that the Supreme Court ruled in New York Times v. Sullivan that governments can’t sue for libel.

The editorial was removed from the Press Register website on the morning of Feb. 19. The newspaper did not respond to requests for comment.

A full hearing on granting a permanent injunction is scheduled for Feb. 27.