Iowa high court: Editors can't be forced to reveal sources

By The Associated Press

06.13.02

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DES MOINES, Iowa — The Iowa Supreme Court ruled yesterday that two Waterloo newspaper editors can't be forced to disclose information from confidential sources in a dispute over closed meetings of community college officials.

The court said the Hawkeye Community College "did not prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the material it seeks is not available by less intrusive and non-privileged sources."

Court records pointed to two meetings of the college’s board of trustees covered by the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier, both of which eventually were closed to the public. The meetings resulted in the firing of the school's president.

The newspaper filed a lawsuit alleging the board had violated the state's open-meetings law.

After the lawsuit was filed, court records said, two editors from the newspaper interviewed people who had been at the closed meetings, promising them confidentiality.

In its response to the lawsuit, the college demanded that the editors reveal their sources and produce notes of their interviews.

Since the 1970s, Iowa courts have recognized a limited privilege of journalists to protect their sources, but the college said the editors forfeited that privilege when the lawsuit was filed. That meant they were no longer journalists, but were litigants, the school argued.

A lower court agreed, saying the editors must provide to a judge in confidence the names of the sources and notes of the conversation. The state Supreme Court reversed that decision.

The high court ruled that the newspaper, not the editors, had filed the lawsuit against the college. While the college argued the information it sought from the two was crucial to its ability to defend against the open-meetings lawsuit, the high court disagreed.

"The college did not prove the disputed material is critical to its defense and is unavailable from other non-privileged sources," the court said.

Courier Editor Saul Shapiro said in a statement that the ruling clears the way to focus on the real issue.

"It has been our contention that Hawkeye's claim that it needed to know our sources was nothing more than a diversion, an attempt to get us to cave in rather than break our promises of confidentiality," Shapiro said. Now, three years after the fact, perhaps we can get down to the real issue of whether the trustees violated the state Open Meetings Act."

The newspaper reported that the open-meetings dispute would now return to state district court.

Related

Iowa newspaper, college settle open-meetings lawsuit
Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier claimed Hawkeye Community College board held illegal closed-door meetings that led to firing of college president.  02.05.03