How the law helps and hurts journalists

It’s interesting to notice the dichotomy of laws that exist for the purpose of journalism and communication.  For instance, there are laws which protect journalists from having to reveal a source or reveal information they have gathered, yet there are also laws that disallow the government from doing the same thing.

State shield laws give working journalists immunity from contempt charges if they refuse to reveal their sources of information.  However, there are no federal shield laws, so journalists are at the mercy of the particular state government under which they’re working, and the laws vary from state to state.

 

Outdated shield laws can cause problems for certain journalists, for instance in the case of Price v. Time.  In 2002, a reporter for Sports Illustrated, Don Yeager, wrote an article about University of Alabama football coach Mike Price.  According to Yeager’s article, Mike Price employed prostitutes while on a team trip to Florida.

Price sued Sports Illustrated’s parent company Time, Inc., for libel.  In order to prove the validity of the article, Yeager was asked to reveal which prostitutes he used as sources. 

In Alabama, the shield statute Ala. Code § 12-21-142 gives protection to “newspaper, radio broadcasting station or television station.”  The statute does not give any mention of magazines, which, for the purposes of this case, were considered patently different from newspapers.

Surely magazine journalists should have the same protection as newspaper journalists—their jobs are hardly different, and one is not necessarily more professional or more respectable than the other.  But until state governments choose to rewrite laws that have fallen behind the times, journalists must be familiar with the specifics of their own state’s shield laws.  They must understand that loopholes of that nature could let them slip through the cracks.

The government has other ways of surpassing shield laws, even when a state’s statute should protect a journalist.  Because there are no federal shield laws, there is nothing that prevents the federal government from issuing subpoenas that force journalists to reveal information.

In 2006, Josh Wolf, a video blogger in California, taped footage of riots in which several police cars were damaged.  The California state government wanted Wolf to turn over his tapes so they could persecute the rioters, but knew that state shield laws would protect his right to withhold information.

The state government realized that some federal money had been spent on the police cars, and for that reason alone they could make a federal case.  Because there are no federal shield laws, Wolf’s tapes were subpoenaed.

Wolf refused to give his tapes to the government and was jailed for a total of 226 days—the longest a journalist has ever been jailed for refusing to reveal sources.

 

The relationship between journalists and the government is give and take.  Whether a journalist wants to withhold information from the government, or access information that the government wants to withhold, they need to be completely familiar with federal and state laws.

Sunshine laws are meant to serve journalists by increasing government transparency.  Like shield laws, laws promoting open government vary state by state. Journalists must familiarize themselves with federal laws such as the Government in Sunshine Act and the Freedom of Information Act, as well as their state laws regarding government meetings and public records.