As part of a journalism class I teach at Boise State University, one chapter is dedicated to law and ethics. In that chapter, we talk about “shield laws,” which are laws meant to protect journalists from being subpoenaed in criminal or civil cases to reveal confidential sources or disclose otherwise unpublished information, including notes or interview recordings.
The idea behind a shield law is to protect the activity of news-gathering and to ensure the freedom of the press, a freedom that the founding fathers recognized as so important to the republic that they put it in the very first amendment to the Constitution.
Every semester, I tell my students that Idaho is one of just 10 states that doesn’t have a shield law enshrined in law…