Journalist Toni Locy Held in Contempt for not Revealing Sources in Anthrax Investigation
I saw a news article about this situation recently, but never got around to blogging it. Seeing an Associated Press article in today’s Boston Globe gives me an excuse to pick it up, especially since it’s been a while since I’ve said anything about a shield law in this space.
You might remember the post-9/11 anthrax attacks, especially because of how they impacted our friends at American Media, publishers of several fabulous tabloids that make waiting in the grocery store line almost bearable. Photo editor Bob Stevens died of anthrax in early October, 2001, and the entire AMI building was closed off and precautions taken to protect the health of the staff.
Reporter Toni Locy, who at the time worked for USA Today, covered the criminal investigation following the anthrax attacks. Part of a lawsuit by scientist Steven Hatfill, one of the persons of interest following the attacks, calls for her to reveal her sources. U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton ordered her to pay up to $5,000 a day out of her own pocket each day Locy chooses not to confess. She is doing what she can to uphold some of the beliefs of her profession about protecting her sources. Federal courts in Washington, DC, often uphold shield issues based on the First Amendment in civil cases like Hatfill’s suit. Locy’s attorneys and several media outlets believe Walton is not using the law correctly and are trying to get the ruling reversed.
"Privacy Act claims like the ones Hatfill filed should not be ‘transformed into all-purpose anti-leak remedies wielded against government speech with reporters as collateral damage,’ stated the brief by news organizations.
Hatfill’s private interest in obtaining additional evidence for his civil damages claim ‘cannot outweigh the public’s interest in protecting journalists’ abilities to report on matters as consequential as that at issue here: one of the largest, if not the largest, still-unsolved investigations in recent history into murders that terrified a nation,’ the news media’s filing stated."
