California

A reporter for The San Diego Union-Tribune will have to testify as a defense witness in a court-martial, a military judge ruled Monday.

A California judge on Friday sealed the identity of a San Francisco State University photojournalism student who was taking pictures when his subject was slain in April, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

A student journalist who witnessed a killing in San Francisco is trying to use California's shield law to protect his work., the San Francisco Chronicle reports. 

A potentially misleading Fox News caption did not provide a sufficient basis for a finding of false and defamatory meaning when viewed as just one part of an entire broadcast, a California appeals court ruled Thursday in a 2-1 decision.

A bill introduced in California’s legislature would allow state agencies to stop filling the open-records requests of people who have asked for records too many times.

The bill sets out a process for an agency to seek a court order allowing them to no longer process records requests when the requester has an “improper purpose, which includes, but is not limited to, the harassment of a public agency or its employees.”

A California court ruled last week that a high school principal who sent a copy of a MySpace journal entry to a local newspaper is not liable for invading the Web author’s privacy.

In a preliminary hearing Monday for a former teacher charged with sexually abusing his son, California Judge Bridgid McCann told Victorville Daily Press reporter Patrick Thatcher not to publish the last name of the alleged victim, who had testified in open court, the newspaper reports. Several First Amendment experts are questioning the legality of the judge's move.

CBS does not have to hand over the unaired footage of a 60 Minutes interview with a Marine who is being investigated on several charges related to the 2005 deaths in Haditha, Iraq, a military judge at Camp Pendelton ruled Thursday.

A California appellate court has ruled that coroner and autopsy records can be considered investigatory files when used by a local agency for law enforcement purposes. The decision came last month in a case involving a reporter who sought such records as she prepared a book on a murder trial.

Ten news and media outlets asked a federal judge on Thursday to disclose the juror questionnaires in the upcoming perjury trial of baseball star Barry Bonds, reports the Associated Press.