After reading in our book about how the Supreme Court left
shield laws up to the individual states. I decided to see which states had
shield laws and which did not. What I did not expect to find was a third
category, those covered by the Minnesota Free Flow of Information Act.
For help in explaining the Minnesota Free Flow of
Information Act, I lifted a paragraph from the Citizen Media Law Project:
"In order to protect the public interest and the free flow of
information, the news media
should have the benefit of a substantial privilege not to reveal sources of information
or to disclose unpublished information. To this end, the freedom of press requires
protection of the confidential relationship between the news gatherer
and the source of information. The purpose of sections 595.021 to 595.025 is to
insure and perpetuate, consistent with the public interest, the confidential
relationship between the news media and its sources". (Minnesota)
This law was a state-driven effort to force the hand of the
federal government into enacting a federal shield law for journalists for the
first time. However, even though this act was first passed in Minnesota, it has
also been adopted by many other states…California is not one of them, but is well protected in other ways.
Works Cited
"Minnesota Statutes
595.021-.025 | Citizen Media Law Project." Home | Citizen Media Law
Project. Web. 05 Dec. 2011.
<http://www.citmedialaw.org/minnesota-statutes-595-021-025>.
