> Under the reporter’s privilege, a plaintiff in a defamation suit should first prove that what a journalist reported was false, defamatory and based upon unreliable sources before documents are turned over to anyone.<p>Unfortunately, this allows media to presume guilt and smear the subject while requiring extensive legal cost, pain and suffering, and often little to no recourse, even in court.<p>I’m not sure about the details of this case, but I have a close family member who the media decided to publish false allegations as fact. The scope of the allegations is large (related to billions of dollars of public money), but they were a salaried employee making less than a new grad at a tech company.<p>Following the stories, which are picked up and reported by other news outlets, social media runs with it and dumps even more accusations that have no basis in reality.<p>The end result was they were effectively fired, have to “prove” their innocence in the public square when all information to do so is private and confidential or held by those who made the accusations, and now have to go through life with the burden of extensive local coverage of actions of a false narrative. While they retained legal counsel, the cost and time to correct the record is likely out of their reach.<p>This has made me extremely skeptical of news outlets and what agendas might be pushing the stories they are publishing. It may not even be the reporters fault- they are given a juicy document dump that doesn’t tell the entire story and then they infer the worst about the subject. Once that’s done there is seemingly little a normal person can do to fight back.
Two things:<p>1. Americans (in particular) often bemoan how inefficient the government is as a reason to cut government services. In truth, government progrtams are designed to fail. This is a highly successful strategy called "starving the beast" [1].<p>As an example, in 1996 then-president Clinton enacted welfare reform. One provision replaced a Federal program caleld Aid to Families with Dependent Children ("AFDC") with state block grants to a new program called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families ("TANF"). This allows the state to decide how that many is spent. This has been a disaster for getting aid to those that need it [2] and much more inefficient.<p>It's this kind of thing that enabled Mississippi's welfare corruption.<p>2. A lot of effort has been spent and is still being spent to essentially divert federal funds to private (typically religious) institutions. That includes TANF blcok grants but, more importantly, the issue of "school choice", which is really just diverting education funds to religious schools.<p>[1]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://copolicy.org/news/tanfs-cautionary-tale-about-block-grants/" rel="nofollow">https://copolicy.org/news/tanfs-cautionary-tale-about-block-...</a>
Seems like the kind of thing that could make its way to the Supreme Court. I grew up partly in Mississippi and it wouldn't shock me at all if everything they're saying is true.
"A judge ordred us to turn over privledged documents"<p>Don't. Face the consequences. You chose to fight on this hill. Giving up your sources is immoral.
So, let assume corruption exists (because… duh).<p>And that there is always a risk of a government trying to overstep and get privileged information they shouldn’t.<p>No amount of laws are going to really stop this from happening if a corrupted government is driven enough.<p>I am wondering if there is a way that this could be solved with technology so they could say, it’s impossible to comply.<p>Something like after published it’s encrypted and inaccessible but then that defeats storing it in the first place if you can’t decrypt it and if you can you can be compelled.<p>Maybe it’s not realistic but a thought I have had especially comparing to some other situations where the government wanted some data but it was impossible to comply thanks to encryption.
What's the legal basis for journalists' notes being "privileged"? There's protections for lawyers and doctors, but what exists for journalists aside from a vague sense of "journalism is important for democracy"?