Editorial: Demanding reporters’ notes is a bad idea
Publisher’s note: This editorial is from the Feb. 6, 2017, Reno Gazette-Journal.
If prosecutors, defense attorneys, the police or any other agent can come into a newsroom and take a reporter’s materials, journalists cannot do their jobs independently.
Yet that is what an attorney in a local drug case demands.
Theresa Ristenpart represents Braden Riley, one of nine defendants arrested as part of a federal investigation into a Reno opioid distribution ring.
She served RGJ breaking news reporter Marcella Corona and the RGJ with subpoenas for any materials involving contact with a former Washoe County jail inmate that she thinks might help her client.
