Shield Law

The Arkansas governor signed late last month an amendment to the state shield law that will protect television and Internet reporters from the compelled disclosure of their sources. The amended act will go into law 90 days after the state legislature officially adjourns.

A Marion County, Ind., court ruled that news outlets can be ordered to disclose identifying information about those who post anonymously on the news outlets' websites.

A state judge in Texas earlier this week quashed a subpoena ordering a journalist to testify in a murder trial, in a rare test of the reporter's privilege in criminal courts since Texas enacted its Free Flow of Information Act in 2009.

Defense attorneys argued that, as shown by her articles, Donna Fielder, a staff writer for the Denton Record-Chronicle, was privy to essential information that would refute investigators’ testimonies concerning the defendant.

A newspaper in West Virginia is attempting to maintain its privilege to refuse to disclose confidential sources after a lower-court judge ordered the paper to reveal the identities of anonymous sources and documents in a defamation suit against the paper.

The Lincoln Journal, the defendant in the suit, appealed the judge’s ruling to the state Supreme Court in order to keep its sources anonymous in the case. The court heard oral arguments Tuesday.

In a victory for the state’s five-month-old shield law, a Kansas trial court ruled Tuesday that a reporter for The Wichita Eagle does not have to provide the names of confidential sources in a lawsuit involving the accidental death of a child last March, the Eagle reported.

The publisher and two editors of a Montana newspaper are relying on the state’s shield law to quash subpoenas for their testimony in a change of venue hearing for a double homicide trial, said Pete Meloy, the newspaper’s attorney.

Lawyers for Justine Winter, the 17-year-old defendant accused of killing a mother and son when she drove her car over the center line of a Montana highway, have filed a motion for a change of venue, claiming that online comments and responses to the Daily Inter Lake’s coverage of the case have tainted the jury pool, he said.

A Buffalo, N.Y., judge issued a subpoena Friday for the notes of a television reporter’s interview with 44-year-old Muzzammil Hassan, who is accused of beheading his wife in 2009. Erie County Judge Thomas Franczyk also prohibited Hassan from doing any on-camera interviews.

Two government defendants in a civil rights lawsuit yesterday dropped a subpoena for unedited video footage of a reporter’s interview with the plaintiff in the case.

Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle signed into law a reporter's shield bill protecting confidential sources and newsgathering materials.

Wisconsin's Whistleblower Protection Act, the 39th such law in the nation, provides journalists with an absolute privilege to withhold the identity of confidential sources and a qualified privilege to protect from disclosure unpublished newsgathering information.

A New Jersey appeals court on Thursday affirmed a lower court's ruling that said a libel defendant could not use the reporter's shield law because not all bloggers are journalists, and the defendant was not engaged in journalism.

The plaintiff, Too Much Media, sued Shellee Hale in New Jersey after she posted comments stating that the company, which works with websites in the adult entertainment industry, was profiting from a security breach in its program.