Many journalists, constitutional lawyers, and plain old average Americans have expressed alarm at recent revelations about the Obama Administration’s “ unprecedented number of leak investigations .” Perhaps most notably, James Goodale, who...(read more)
Criminal Defendant Denied Access to Reality Show Footage
A trial court judge in Charlotte ruled Thursday that a defendant in a murder case is not entitled to unaired footage from the A&E series The First 48 . The case presented an interesting twist on shield law issues. Jonathan Fitzgerald has been...(read more)
North Carolina Media Quash Subpoena in Federal Court
North Carolina media organizations won a significant victory in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina last week when a group of the state’s media outlets convinced a federal judge to quash subpoenas that sought from the...(read more)
New York Court Rejects Effort to Identify Anonymous Internet Speaker
In yet another data point on the status of anonymous Internet speech, a New York judge this week quashed a subpoena seeking the identity of a person who had posted comments on a newspaper website. We have covered this topic in a number of prior...(read more)
Quantifying the Chilling Effect of Newsroom Subpoenas
The Media Law Resource Center recently flagged this interesting study , by Professor RonNell Andersen Jones , due to be published soon in the Washington Law Review . Professor Jones, a former newspaper reporter who has written widely on meda law...(read more)
Illinois Judge Orders Disclosure of Anonymous Commenters
Back in December we wrote a series of posts about the emerging issue of subpoenas seeking the identity of anonymous commenters to newspaper web sites. In the intervening weeks, the issue has continued to develop, with news coming recently that a...(read more)
What To Do When You Are Served With a Subpoena
A sheriff's deputy has arrived in your newsroom, with what you now are sure is a subpoena . In fact, let’s be more specific. You spent six months investigating an in-depth enterprise piece on the influx of undocumented workers in a neighboring...(read more)
What Is a Subpoena?
It’s the pivotal moment in countless episodes of Law & Order and CSI. You know the scene by heart, no doubt. Detectives approach the intrepid reporter asking for some video or information about where the reporter got a piece of information. The...(read more)