Digital Media and Data Privacy Law Blog

In a case we first flagged back in October of 2009, the Supreme Court last week handed down its decision in Doe v. Reed, a case involving a First Amendment challenge to Washington state's public records act.  The case presented an interesting collision of interests for the media, but the Court held 8-1 that the First Amendment did not prevent the disclosure, pursuant to the PRA, of the identities of those citizens who signed a petition seeking to place a referendum on the ballot.

When the Court granted cert in January, we described the case as follows:

The dispute in Doe v. Reed involves the ...

A panel of the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Appellate District in Ohio has affirmed a lower court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of an Ohio radio station in a defamation and false light invasion of privacy case involving a former candidate for judicial election. The Fifth District’s opinion in Christiansen v. WCLT et al. is linked here. 

Shortly before the November 2008 general election, radio station WCLT (Newark, Ohio) aired and posted to its website a political editorial in which the station’s general manager expressed his opinion that two of three candidates were ... Read More 

In a decision with important implications for bloggers and other so-called "new media" journalists seeking to invoke the protections of their state's reporter's privilege, a New Jersey appeals court recently held that New Jersey's shield statute did not protect a woman who operated a web site dedicated to revealing "criminal activity" within the pornography industry.

The appellate court's decision in Too Much Media, LLC v. Shellee Hale affirmed a trial court decision requiring Hale to reveal her sources for a series of web postings that the plaintiffs asserted were, among other ... Read More