Serving as witnesses, two York County freelance reporters effectively fought off questions from attorneys for the plaintiffs and defendants in the Dover intelligent design trial Thursday and Friday.
\nTo understand the long road from covering Dover meetings to becoming fact witnesses in federal court, read my column appearing in the York Sunday News on Oct. 30.<\/p>\n
\nReporters must be free
\nto work for our freedom
\nBy now, you might have read that freelance writers for the two York newspapers have been compelled to testify, under the warning of imprisonment or fines, in the Dover intelligent design trial.
\nSo what? You might be thinking.
\nThe writers for the York Daily Record\/Sunday News and The York Dispatch were there, witnessing Dover school board members indicate motivations for introducing intelligent design into high school curriculum. They should stand up for what they wrote.
\nTo heck with any court-tested reporters\u2019 privilege giving the writers protection from testimony, if other witnesses at Dover school board meetings could say the same thing.
\nBut wait.
\nConsider it this way.
\nWhat if attorneys for the plaintiffs \u2014 the ACLU et al \u2014 had subpoenaed the school board\u2019s solicitor rather than a couple of reporters?
\nThe solicitor was privy to discussions beneficial to the plaintiffs\u2019 case, same as reporters.
\nNo way, you might argue.
\nThat would undermine attorney-client privilege. Public officials and regular people would no longer enjoy the confidentiality of talking with their attorneys.
\nWell, the law has granted similar reporter\/source privileges of confidentiality and other protections to journalists in their news-gathering efforts.
\nOtherwise, reporters would be called constantly as witnesses in trials, thereby being forced to testify for one side or the other. They would, indeed, be tainted \u2014 seen as pawns for one side or opponents to the other.
\nSuppose you were at a township meeting, heatedly speaking out on eminent domain or some other thorny issue. If the case went to court, how would you view a reporter testifying about what you said or didn\u2019t say?
\nAs our correspondent Joe Maldonado puts it, he\u2019d have to read a \u201creporter\u2019s Miranda warning\u203f to sources during interviews, stating that whatever they say could be held against them in court, and he might be the one to testify against them on the stand.
\nThat\u2019s why the privilege exists to protect reporters against testifying in civil cases if other witnesses are available, as in the Dover case.
\n\u00bf \u00bf \u00bf
\nA puzzling part of this massive Dover ID trial is that the ACLU, of all organizations, risked undermining the First Amendment and the incarceration and fining of correspondents Maldonado and Heidi Bernhard-Bubb.
\nThe ACLU touts itself as a protector of the First Amendment. It\u2019s guarding against government-established religion in the Dover case. Meanwhile, it took a shot at the part of the amendment protecting freedom of the press.
\nThe ACLU went after the reporters as corroborating witnesses. They already had testimony linking board members\u2019 views with the introduction of ID. The reporters were merely called to underscore this.
\nWorse, had a compromise not been reached, the reporters could have ended up in jail, owing substantial fines.
\nActing against a federal court order, both Joe and Heidi refused to testify at a deposition prompted by the ACLU\u2019s insistence that they take the stand. They believed that the judge\u2019s order was too broad and that their testimony would make it easier for attorneys to drag reporters into court in the future.
\nThe order required them to testify about published and unpublished facts.
\nTheir resistance resulted in a meeting of what seemed to be a thousand legal minds after which Judge John E. Jones III clarified that his order required testimony narrowly restricted to what appeared in the newspaper.
\nThe reporters found this acceptable \u2014 not perfect \u2014 but something they could live with. And certainly better than prison.
\n\u00bf \u00bf \u00bf
\nI was with Joe Maldonado and his wife, Julie, when Niles Benn, our attorney, informed them of the judge\u2019s order narrowing their testimony. That brought tears and phone calls home with the message: Daddy isn\u2019t going to jail.
\nAn ACLU attorney stopped by to say he would never have sent the reporters to jail.
\nYeah, right, I thought.
\nAnd he didn\u2019t mention anything about the fines.
\nIt\u2019s just a sad case of ACLU lawyers in expensive suits picking on a guy with only one. And if Joe had taken the stand without the judge\u2019s narrow order to stick to what\u2019s printed, the school board\u2019s Thomas More Law Center attorneys would have done their best to take that off his back on cross-examination.
\nThomas More lawyers would have done that on the dubious theory that two reporters working for fiercely competitive newspapers would have made the same things up.
\nThe public should view Joe Maldonado and Heidi Heidi Bernhard-Bubb as the truth-telling heroes they are.
\nThey are two everyday people who stood up for First Amendment principles and stared down bullies with polished shoes and thick wallets, trying to draw them into their scuffle when the plaintiffs already had enough friends with their sleeves rolled up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Serving as witnesses, two York County freelance reporters effectively fought off questions from attorneys for<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,7,34,4,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archives-all-posts","category-events","category-explanationscontroversy","category-god-york-county","category-local-journalism-web","category-people"],"yoast_head":"\n