There has always been an uncertain attitude towards journalists. And journalists have always had difficult relationships with the outside world. But in any case, we need journalists as they are the source of all information and a filter from the flood of lies.

I was interested in one case called Branzburg v. Hayes which tells about Paul Branzburg. First of all, Paul Branzburg was a full-time reporter for the Louisville, Kentucky Courier-Journal. In the late 1960s, Branzburg began concentrating his journalistic efforts on covering the use and production of illegal drugs in the Louisville area.

On November 15, 1969, Branzburg published an article documenting how two young people produce marijuana drugs. The article said that Branzburg promised his sources that he would not provide their identities. However, later Branzburg was summoned to testify against the very incidents he had reported.

He refused to identify, but the court of the first instance denied his allegations that there was a reporter’s privilege both in Kentucky and in constitutional law. On appeal, the Kentucky Appeals Court rejected the Branzburg petition. Then Branzburg filed a lawsuit in the US Supreme Court.

Branzburg was summoned to the court to disclose the sources of a report on drug trafficking published by him, while two other applicants were summoned to testify before a grand jury about the events they observed while covering the events in Black Panther.

According to the analysis of the first amendment, the court compared the absence of the privilege of a reporter to the fact that journalists do not have greater access to public affairs than ordinary citizens. In other words, the constitution does not give journalists completely unlimited rights listed in press freedom; rather, this freedom has always contained limitations.

The court noted that the only exception in which the reporter “could claim privilege would have been if it had been possible to prove that the government had acted in bad faith, for example, seeking disclosure for the sake of disclosure and could not demonstrate a real need for testimony” or the agenda was not related with the current legal issue.

In cases of protection of its sources, the court ruled that the journalist’s interest in maintaining confidentiality will lead to the fact that many criminals will avoid judicial responsibility for their actions. While this confidentiality may be part of the freedoms hoped for by the press, the public interest in prosecuting and punishing criminals far outweighs the journalist’s interest in confidentiality.

The court came to the conclusion that it is much better to do something with a crime — for example, to bring the perpetrator to justice — than to simply write about the events that occurred in the commission of the crime.

The federal judicial system, of course, never allowed journalists to refuse to testify. Creating such a privilege would lead to the absurd conclusion that any criminal who simply spoke to a journalist could have avoided responsibility.

The Supreme Court found that the fact that journalists receive information in confidence does not give them the right to conceal this information during a government investigation. In the end, the journalists decided that they would better go to prison and be held responsible for their actions. In this case, the journalist chose to go to imprisonment rather than reveal his source of information.