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If asked whether a reporter faces liability for asking a source to provide information that legally is secret, most media lawyers will answer:  “No, it’s never illegal to ask questions.  You may not bribe, coerce or hack … but just asking questions isn’t a violation of the law.” Few things in the law are easy,…

Have you gotten a call or letter or email from a lawyer saying his client’s record has been expunged, and so the story you posted last year no longer is accurate?  The lawyer wants you to take it down.  What do you do? Assuming the information you published was accurate when you published, you have…

Governor Cooper has signed into law a handful of amendments to NC’s so-called revenge porn law.  (§ 14-190.5A. Disclosure of private images )  As amended, the law applies to live transmissions as well as static images.  It also now applies not only to photographs that were taken with consent with an expectation that they will remain private…

  Public Agencies Putting Records Online You may be familiar with the provision of the Public Records Law that says you get to ask for public records in whatever format you want, so long as they can be provided that way. Persons requesting copies of public records may elect to obtain them in any and…

The United States Supreme Court affirmed the lower court’s ruling that North Carolina’s districts were gerrymandered but found:  “[W]e cannot have confidence that the court adequately grappled with the interests on both sides of the remedial question before us.And because the District Court’s discretion ‘was barely exercised here,’ its order provides no meaningful basis for…

UPDATE:  Applying the wrong law to analyze the situation — and abdicating its public records duties to the Union County DA’s office — the University of North Carolina now has agreed to release the records requested by WBTV reporter Nick Ochsner.  For the updated story, go to  http://tinyurl.com/WBTV-Union-County ___________________________________ The latest legal position taken by…

The latest legal position taken by the University of North Carolina would be shocking if the University had not taken outrageous legal positions in the past.  At one point the University claimed that a photograph taken by a professional photographer was in the public domain because it had been posted on the internet.  (Wrong.)  At…

“NCPA Award Like ‘An Oscar’ For Amanda Martin”  Read here:  NCL May 2017 – Amanda Martin

Following the fire in downtown Raleigh, we had an inquiry about access and the right to be on — and take photographs from — public property.  The Raleigh Police Department’s Media Policies specifically state that although access may be denied “to crime scenes or areas determined to pose unreasonable risk to health or public safety,” media…

North Carolina law requires newspapers accepting political ads to get and maintain certain paperwork.  political-ad-paperwork  In a nutshell, the law requires written authorization for each payment.  Payment must be in a verifiable form (i.e. not cash), and the paper must make those authorizations available for inspection by the public during regular business hours for two years.…