Would you go to jail to protect a stranger who told you the truth?
Florida journalists don’t have to, thanks to Lucy Morgan who 45 years ago faced down the Florida courts while standing up for the First Amendment
They are called “shield laws”. Almost every state has some form of one providing for either “qualified” or “absolute” privilege. The laws are designed to preserve the relationships journalists have with their sources and to prevent a situation where a source could be intimidated — or worse — by the government because of the information they shared with the press.
Scrolling through my Facebook yesterday I discovered that it was the 45th anniversary of one such major media law decision, specifically Lucy Morgan v. State of Florida. Growing up in Florida and working in the state as a journalist for a while, I follow the Florida Supreme Court Facebook page. Here’s the issue: St. Petersburg Times’ reporter Lucy Morgan had been convicted of criminal contempt by a lower court because she refused to name confidential sources in a news investigation during (and after) Grand Jury proceedings in a corruption case in Dade City, Florida.
Under her byline, on November 1, 1973, the Pasco Times published a synopsis of grand jury findings, which had been investigating charges of official corruption in Dade City. The day the article was published the…
