tag:www.pbs.org,2009:/idealab//31/tag:dipsy.pbs.org,2007:/idealab_test_blogs//31.4148- 2009-10-19T21:49:24Z Idea Lab is a group blog by innovators who are reinventing community news for the Digital Age. Movable Type 4.24-en tag:dipsy.pbs.org,2007:/idealab_test_blogs//31.4148 2007-10-25T20:55:46Z 2009-01-05T22:13:46Z

David Ardia http://www.citmedialaw.org/ here, here, here, and here) in the last week of the arrest and subsequent dismissal of charges against Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin, the founders of the Phoenix New Times, a print and online newspaper. Lacey and Larkin were arrested for violating Arizona's grand jury secrecy statute, which makes it a criminal offense for anyone to disclose a "matter attending a grand jury proceeding," after they published details from a grand jury subpoena they received. 

In a post published on our site yesterday, the Citizen Media Law Project's assistant director Sam Bayard offered a careful analysis of the facts and law involved in the case.

While we believe the Arizona statute is overbroad and violates the First Amendment, the case highlights the importance of knowing the laws -- especially the quirky local laws -- that apply to your newsgathering and publishing activities.  Even if you decide to go forward with a planned course of action, it's important to understand your potential legal liability so that your decision can be made with full knowledge of the risks involved. 

It may be that Lacey and Larkin had consulted legal counsel to understand Arizona's grand jury secrecy law before they made the decision to publish, but most freelance and non-traditional journalists don't have a lawyer on hand.  As we roll out our citizen media legal guide, which will cover grand jury secrecy rules, we hope that the Citizen Media Law Project can start to fill this gap.
]]> tag:dipsy.pbs.org,2007:/idealab_test_blogs//31.4148-comment:40947 Ian Monroe http://www.orlandoweekly.com The Phoenix New Times is not the only alt-weekly with legal problems these days. See also http://www.orlandoweekly.com/features/story.asp?id=11910 for the story of how three classified advertising representatives were arrested by Orlando vice cops last week. 2007-10-26T16:01:09Z tag:dipsy.pbs.org,2007:/idealab_test_blogs//31.4148-comment:40948 Benjamin Melançon http://AgaricDesign.com/ Congratulations on CitMediaLaw's new audio podcast! Colin Rhinesmith of both the Action Coalition for Media Education (ACME) and Citizen Media Law Project posted to the ACME list today. Takeaway quotation from the podcast was by David Ardia on the House version of the federal shield bill that limits it to those who enjoy substantial financial gain from media work: Do we really want judges to be deciding whether a journalist is earning enough money to qualify for protection? More to the point, is financial renumeration the criterion we want to be using when we draw the line between those who are entitled to engage in journalism under the protection of a federal shield law and those who must venture forth unprotected? This is in part why I'm so keen to define news and journalism as a step undergirding all the work we're doing. (Unrelated related content note: both ACMEcoalition.org and CitMediaLaw.org run on Drupal.) 2007-10-27T11:36:42Z