/David Calvert/The Nevada Independent
By Daniel Rothberg | The Nevada Independent
In a unanimous decision Thursday, the Nevada Supreme Court ruled that journalists writing for digital publications are protected from revealing their sources. The ruling expands the state’s media shield law, which has not been updated since 1975 and did not contemplate the Internet.
The ruling overturned a lower court decision earlier this year that suggested the law did not protect online publishers in the same way that it protected newspapers. Media industry groups and media law experts said the ruling was flawed and placed significant restrictions on a law that was intended to protect First Amendment speech, whether or not it was made online.
The Supreme Court concluded “that one can ‘print’ in more than one way.”
“Just because a newspaper can exist online, it does not mean it ceases to be a newspaper,” Chief Justice Mark Gibbons wrote in the court’s opinion. “To hold otherwise would be to create an absurd result in direct contradiction of the rules of statutory interpretation.”
