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 Topeka Capital-Journal is planning to file a lawsuit today after being denied access to the flight log of a police helicopter that crashed on April 4.
Days following the crash, the newspaper requested the log under the Kansas Open Records Act, saying that details of the flight and the identities of its victims was public information.
Reporters and other document requesters are used to being disrespected or even completely ignored when exercising their rights under state public records law. Law enforcement officials in particular often seem to be among the most likely to brush aside records requests and journalists can often feel powerless to stop them.
That no longer appears to be the case in Helena, Ark.
Recorded police interviews with the man charged with killing a University of Vermont student will remain sealed for at least a week, a trial judge decided Friday.
Chittenden County Judge Michael Kupersmith held that the audio and video recordings of interviews with Brian Rooney, 37, will be kept private to maintain Rooney’s right to a fair trial and until Kupersmith issues a ruling.
A federal judge refused to allow New York City to file a secret affidavit in the New York Police Department's defense in a case brought by the New York Civil Liberties Union alleging illegal police tactics at the 2004 Republican National Convention.
Mel Gibson's booze-fueled, anti-Semitic outburst during his DUI arrest last August is old news, to be sure. But the Associated Press reported today that an internal investigation of the incident showed that Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department officials did their best to cover up some of the Academy Award winner's more bizarre and offensive comments during the arrest.
Bill Lawson offers a harrowing first-person account of his arrest earlier this week while covering a residential house fire for the Maumelle [Ark.] Monitor. In it, Lawson complains of being roughed up by a state trooper and describes his experience as “abusive” and “downright scary.”
It's one of those twists you just cannot make up. But after denying access to a seven-year-old police report because of "privacy concerns", police officials in St. Paul, Minn., were angry to learn that the report had been obtained anyway, and so subpoenaed the private cell phone records of a reporter and one of its own employees. Police concerns over privacy seem to be somewhat selective, to say the least.
The Chicago Tribune has filed a lawsuit against the Illinois State Police seeking the release of records about claims of possible improper political interference undermining state investigations.
The Georgia Supreme Court is in the midst of a case that should be frustratingly familiar to most police and crime reporters, regardless of the state law involved.
