Shield laws

(H/t CJR)

The Cincinnati Enquirer's Cameron McWhirter relates a personal run-in with prosecutors and Ohio's journalistic shield law.

I vaguely recall the Chiquita scandal, the Enquirer came out looking pretty bad on account of a rogue reporter.

The reporter's name was Mike Gallagher:

Gallagher had lied to [the Enquirer] about having a source within Chiquita who had provided him information. Instead, he had illegally accessed Chiquita’s voicemail system himself, hundreds of times, despite being warned repeatedly not to do so by editors and lawyers. ... Under intense pressure from Chiquita, Gannett fired Gallagher, paid $14 million to Chiquita, and published a disturbing front-page apology that implied that Gallagher’s misdeeds had negated the entire series. The Enquirer and the rest of the Cincinnati media abandoned the substantive truth of the series. I was ordered not to write about Chiquita. The ban lasted five years.

It got worse. County officials set up a special prosecutor to investigate the newspaper and individuals who worked on the project. Gallagher, facing criminal prosecution, abandoned his carefully constructed self-image as an intrepid reporter and quickly cut a deal. He waived Ohio’s shield law and agreed to reveal sources....

I found myself sitting in a shabby, windowless conference room in a low-rent section of Cincinnati’s modest downtown. My lawyer and I sat on one side of a scuffed table. The special prosecutor and his associates sat on the other side...

The special prosecutor wanted me to do something simple: sign a piece of paper agreeing to waive Ohio’s shield law. Doing so would require me to disclose confidential sources with whom I had spoken during the yearlong investigation. He made clear that the risks of not cooperating were great, and threatened to indict me on unspecified charges. I could lose my job; I could go to jail, he said. I must fully cooperate and waive the shield law or he would come after me. His threats, for a while delivered hourly in telephone calls to my lawyer, ranged wildly. He claimed he was going to prosecute me for being a co-conspirator of some kind.

Now, this is what happens when there IS a shield law. Imagine what kind of retribution the well-financed would have at their disposal if there weren't a shield law?

Read the full story.