Everything online journalists need to protect their legal rights. This free resource culls from all Reporters Committee resources and includes exclusive content on digital media law issues.
Summary of statute(s): An individual who is a party to an electronic communication or who has the consent of one of the parties to the communication, can lawfully record it or disclose its contents, unless the person is doing so for the purpose of committing a criminal or tortious act. But a lawful recording of an in-person conversation requires the consent of all parties. Mo. Ann. Stat. § 542.402 (West 2012).
Less than a year after the U.S. Supreme Court held that the First Amendment protects a fringe church’s angry, anti-gay protests at military funerals, a lower federal court struck down a city ordinance that restricted the time and place of the protected picketing activities.
A lengthy investigation in Missouri has bolstered allegations that former Gov. Matt Blunt's administration violated various state open records laws, the Associated Press reports.
Gov. Matt Blunt will give the Missouri attorney general's office thousands of pages of email records to settle a lawsuit against his office alleging he "knowingly and purposely" violated open records laws by deleting email messages.
Since 1998, the price for ordering the records has been $1.25 per individual copy and significantly less when the records are ordered in bulk. Under the change, which went into effect on May 1, all copies now cost $7.
A special investigative team set up by Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon is suing to force Gov. Matt Blunt and the state's custodian of records to release state government e-mails for free after the governor's office attempted to charge $540,940 for them, according to a St. Louis Post-Dispatch report.
Two journalists were subpoenaed late last week in relation to a wrongful-firing/defamation lawsuit filed by Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt’s former staff attorney Scott Eckersley.
Associated Press reporter David A. Lieb and a former reporter for the Kansas City Star were ordered to appear at the governor’s attorneys’ law firm for questioning about a media packet that Blunt sent out last October.
Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt's demands that the state pay $540,000 to access his office's e-mail records -- government records covered under the state's Sunshine Law -- show his complete disregard for public access to information and clearly attempts to derail the state's investigation into whether his office illegally deleted e-mails messages.
Donnelly, a Democrat running for attorney general, drafted the measure as a result of the Missouri Ethics Commission’s decision to close campaign finance hearings on whether candidates should return excessive campaign contributions. House Bill 2303 seeks to open these hearings to the public.
