Philadelphia reporters fined $100 a minute for not releasing notes

By The Associated Press

12.15.00

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Editor's note: In January 2001, Mark Bowden and Linn Washington Jr. asked the Pennsylvania Superior Court to overturn the $40,000 fines imposed by Judge Jane Cutler Greenspan.

PHILADELPHIA — Testimony ended in a murder trial yesterday without reporters from two newspapers turning over notes from their interviews with the defendant despite a $100-per-minute fine imposed by the judge.

Common Pleas Judge Jane Cutler Greenspan ordered the fines to begin at noon Dec. 13 and continue until the end of testimony yesterday.

Prosecutor Emily Zimmerman told the judge she had understood that the fine would accrue overnight. But yesterday, Greenspan said it would add up only while the reporters were in court. By the time testimony ended midday, each fine amounted to $40,000.

The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Tribune, a twice-weekly black newspaper, said they would appeal the fines imposed on their reporters.

The enormous fine caught the attention of Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

"The court imposed the fine because they didn't want the journalists to become quote-unquote martyrs," Dalglish said in a telephone interview with
The Freedom Forum Online. "It's an interesting strategy. It's what judges often do when they think journalists could become martyrs in cases like these. But this is the harshest fine I've ever heard."

Brian Tyson, 41, on trial for the 1997 shooting death of 23-year-old Damon Millner, was under house arrest when he told the reporters he fired in self-defense after a gang of drug dealers shot at him and tried to blow up his car.

Closing arguments in the case were held yesterday afternoon. The jury was expected to begin deliberations today.

Inquirer reporter Mark Bowden testified yesterday morning, exclusively answering questions related to his three-part series about Tyson from June 1998. He held paper copies of the articles while on the stand, referring to the text after nearly every question and reading verbatim several times.

Twice, the 21-year Inquirer veteran "respectfully declined to answer" questions from the prosecutor about his unpublished recollections of the interviews with Tyson. He cited Pennsylvania's shield law and the First Amendment.

Bowden's testimony was part of the prosecution's rebuttal to Tyson's testimony on Dec. 13, which prosecutors claim was inconsistent with his earlier interviews. Assistant District Attorney Amy Zimmerman told the judge the reporters' notes would further refute Tyson's testimony.

Tribune reporter Linn Washington Jr. was not asked to testify, though his notes had been subpoenaed.

"The job of a newspaper is not to serve as an investigative arm of the prosecution," Inquirer Editor Robert Rosenthal said.

The original Dec. 4 court order called for unpublished information from the two journalists but expressly forbid the release of confidential sources. It also stated that prosecutors couldn't use the order for "a fishing expedition" and must confine their effort to verbatim or substantially verbatim quotes from the defendant about the murder or about his relationship with drug dealers in the neighborhood.

The judge justified her order, saying that only the two journalists knew all of the details about their interviews with Tyson.

"That's an interesting interpretation of the standard," Dalglish said. "It's not because journalists are privy to specific conversations. The issue is, Are they privy to the information that was contained in the conversation?"

She said if the information could be obtained in other ways, such as police interrogations or interviews with neighbors, then the journalists' notes should remain privileged.

"If anybody has the fortitude to not cave in on an issue like this, it's The Philadelphia Inquirer," Dalglish said.

Pennsylvania is one of 40 states with a shield law protecting journalists from divulging unpublished reporting. However, the state Supreme Court rejected the newspapers' appeal for a stay on Dec. 11, saying the interview notes are not protected because Tyson did not request confidentiality.

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