“The law leaves no question as to the impropriety of banning certain media while allowing only friendly media,” said Pamela Marsh, executive director of the First Amendment Foundation, an organization that advocates for open government and represents news organizations, including the Tampa Bay Times and the Miami Herald. “That is viewpoint and content discrimination.” Decades of precedent in federal courts have affirmed that elected officials cannot block certain news outlets from reporting on public events just because they don’t like the coverage. In Louisiana in the 1980s, a local mayor attempted to exclude reporters from a certain newspaper from major press conferences. The newspaper sued. A federal court called the mayor’s actions “the essence of censorship forbidden by the First Amendment and so abhorred by the founding fathers,” and the newspaper won.