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ASNE files amicus brief to protect reporter-source relationship


ASNE fought back against a trampling on the First Amendment this week. We are speaking out in support of Jana Winter, the Fox News reporter who was issued a subpoena by the Colorado court trying James Holmes, who killed 12 people and injured 58 others in last summer's now infamous shooting in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater. Holmes's defense attorneys are asking Winter to identify two unnamed law enforcement sources she quoted as saying that, before the shooting, Holmes mailed a notebook to a University of Colorado psychiatrist that included details about his intentions to kill. 

ASNE fought back against a trampling on the First Amendment this week. We are speaking out in support of Jana Winter, the Fox News reporter who was issued a subpoena by the Colorado court trying James Holmes, who killed 12 people and injured 58 others in last summer's now infamous shooting in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater. Holmes's defense attorneys are asking Winter to identify two unnamed law enforcement sources she quoted as saying that, before the shooting, Holmes mailed a notebook to a University of Colorado psychiatrist that included details about his intentions to kill.
 
Forty-three news organizations and companies joined an amicus brief drafted by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and filed in a New York appellate court. Winter and Fox News are proactively attacking the subpoena, arguing that New York (where she resides) should never have allowed her to be served with a subpoena issued by a Colorado court. While Winter and Fox are mainly attacking the procedural service of process issues, our amicus brief lays out the greater public policy arguments -- arguing why the New York courts, as a matter of policy, should protect the reporter-source relationship in light of its long history in New York (dating back to the famous John Peter Zenger case in the 1730s) and the public interest benefits it has served throughout the country.

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