Court Opinion

ID: 9677901
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 06:04:53.250631+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:59.719926
License: Public Domain

EDWARD P. HILL, JR., Chief Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent from the majority’s opinion interpreting an act of the Legislature (KRS 421.100) that has been the law of our Commonwealth for more than thirty-four years without being heretofore questioned in the courts.
I shall not attempt to reiterate in this dissent the facts of the case but shall go right to the heart of the question. The majority opinion to my mind has adopted a strained and unnecessarily narrow construction of the term “source of any information procured or obtained” used in KRS 421.100. I believe that the phrase “source of any information” is a broad, comprehensive one, certainly not a technical phrase.
The majority opinion stands for the proposition that the statute in question does not apply in instances in which a newspaper reporter witnesses the commission of a crime. But the statute does not place any such limitation on the privilege. It certainly would have been no trouble for the Legislature to have provided for an exception to the privilege had it thought one advisable. The statute in question is the expression of public policy by the proper branch of government, the Legislature, after nearly 150 years’ experience, and this court has no business interfering with great and fundamental policy questions of our system of government.
It must be remembered that the present case does not involve injury to life, limb, or property. But even if it did, we have a situation requiring the balance of values, and I believe, as apparently did the Legislature, that the benefits to society from thoroughly and correctly reporting current events greater outweighs the probable and highly imaginary possibility of their abuse under the statute. Who ever heard of a man about to commit a crime against life, limb, or property either calling in a newspaper reporter or soliciting a newspaper reporter to witness the crime upon being assured that the reporter would not disclose what he was about to observe? Actually, the privilege provided in the statute is one which the newspaper people may weigh, *349and I have greater confidence in the newspaper world than to think it would participate in such an imaginary scheme or refuse to divulge important information obtained under such circumstances.
I recognize that the authorities in this country are not uniform with respect to whether newspapers have the privilege safeguarded by our statute and guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. See 47 Oregon L.Rev. 243 (1968), and 82 Harv.L.Rev. 1384 (1969). However, I am unable to find any authority from any state refusing to give such privilege a broad interpretation when a statute has been enacted by the legislature of such state safeguarding that privilege.
For an excellent summary of various newspapermen immunity statutes see D’Alemberte, “Journalists Under the Ax: Protection of Confidential Sources of Information,” 6 Harv.L.Legis. 307 (1969).
I conclude this dissent by quoting In re Taylor, 412 Pa. 32, 193 A.2d 181, 185, 7 A.L.R.3d 580, 587 (1963):
“It is a matter of widespread common and therefore of Judicial knowledge that newspapers and news media are the principal source of news concerning daily local, State, National and international events. We would be unrealistic if we did not take judicial notice of another matter of wide public knowledge and great importance, namely, that important information, tips and leads will dry up and the public will often be deprived of the knowledge of dereliction of public duty, bribery, corruption, conspiracy and other crimes committed or possibly committed by public officials or by powerful individuals or organizations, unless newsmen are able to fully and completely protect the sources of their information. It is vitally important that this public shield against governmental inefficiency, corruption and crime be preserved against piercing and erosion.
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“The Act of 1937 is a wise and salutary declaration of public policy whose spiritual father is the revered Constitutionally ordained freedom of the press. The Act must therefore, we repeat, be liberally and broadly construed in order to carry out the clear objective and intent of the Legislature which has placed the gathering and the protection of the source of news as of greater importance to the public interest and of more value to the public welfare- than the disclosure of the alleged crime or the alleged criminal.”
I would issue the writ of prohibition sought herein.