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.
The Reporters Committee has signed on to a brief with 18 other news organizations asking the New Jersey Supreme Court to overturn a decision that narrowed the fair report privilege for court documents.
The Supreme Court on Monday refused to take up Steven Hatfill's libel lawsuit against The New York Times over a series of 2002 columns describing Hatfill as a possible focus of the anthrax investigation.
The high court made no comment in declining to revive the case.
A classical music critic is suing his employer, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, for libel after he was demoted for, he claims, writing too many negative reviews of the Cleveland Orchestra, The New York Times reported.
The Associated Press reported today on a Midwest-newspaper tale of small-scale internecine warfare, erupting this week into the courts with a defamation lawsuit.
The Wall Street Journal Asia was held in contempt of court and fined about $16,000 by the high court in Singapore for two editorials and a letter to the editor that criticized the country’s judiciary.
A New Jersey appellate court ruled last week that journalists can be subject to libel lawsuits for reporting the contents of a legal complaint.
Though the fair report privilege has long provided journalists with a defense to libel suits for stories that quote from official proceedings, the court held that the privilege only applies when journalists quote from court decisions -- not from court pleadings filed by individual parties.
JuicyCampus.com founder Matt Ivester, whose site has been criticized as profiting from invasion of college students’ privacy and tarnishing their reputations, fielded questions this week at Georgetown University and largely brushed off concerns that the site is offensive and damages lives, The Washington Post reported.
A Washington Post article has become caught in the middle of a wrongful termination lawsuit between American University and a former employee.
Susan Clampitt, the former executive director of WAMU, a public radio station at American University, was fired in October 2003 after The Post reported she was mismanaging finances and staff.
A reporter who used a confidential source to report about a grand jury proceeding can keep her source’s identity a secret, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday.
The high court ruled that the state shield law grants an absolute privilege to journalists, and protects their source’s identities from compelled disclosure in all cases – civil, criminal and grand jury proceedings.
A Pennsylvania newspaper has been ordered by a state court of appeals to pay $3.5 million, affirming a lower court’s decision in a libel dispute, The Associated Press reported.
