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.
An Illinois judge ruled earlier this week that while the state's shield law covers student journalists, more than 500 email messages between a Northwestern University professor and his students investigating a 33-year-old murder case must still be turned over to state prosecutors.
Judge Marsha Pechman of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington ruled in favor of Carolyn Nielsen, who wrote articles about a now-exonerated teenage murder defendant during graduate school. Pechman also awarded Nielsen a protective order against future deposition and her attorneys fees and costs.
Attorneys representing a college newspaper and a local prosecutor agreed on Sunday to temporarily seal photographs that were seized from the publication's hard drives and transfer them to a third party until further negotiations can take place, James Madison University's The Breezereported.
A journalism professor who wrote articles about a now-exonerated teenage murder defendant during graduate school has been subpoenaed by lawyers representing Chicago police officers.
A federal magistrate said this week that a former Florida high school student who was suspended for criticizing her teacher on Facebook can proceed with a lawsuit against the principal who suspended her, CNN reported.
The magistrate's decision to deny the principal's motion to dismiss the suit could set an important legal precedent for cases involving free speech on social networking sites.
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has agreed to settle an open records lawsuit by providing previously redacted information and paying $11,765 in legal fees to its student newspaper, The UWM Postreported.
In an effort to persuade prosecutors to withdraw a subpoena for Innocence Project students’ notes, grades, and other information, a lawyer for the criminal defendant whose conviction is being questioned withdrew yesterday some of the exculpatory evidence journalism students had previously uncovered, the Daily Northwesternreported.
A California state Senate committee passed the latest incarnation of a bill today that would extend existing free-speech laws to charter schools. The bill will likely go to the full floor for a vote as early as next week.
Media organizations today urged an Illinois judge to block a criminal prosecutor’s subpoena for the notes and records from students in Medill's Innocence Project at Northwestern University.
A Texas appellate court ruled last week that the defamation suit filed by a cameraman against a college newspaper he thought wrongfully suggested that he had tipped off David Koresh's Branch Davidian compound about an impending federal raid in 1993 was rightfully dismissed by the trial court, the Waco Tribune-Heraldreported.
