HB0091 - News Source Shield Law

Video footage is from the House Minerals, Business and Economic Development meeting held on January 25, 2023. Be sure to watch as legislators ask important questions about this bill.

House Bill 91, a "news source shield law" that is now before the Wyoming Legislature, relies on a narrower definition, and would prevent the government from forcing institutional journalists to disclose their sources except in narrow circumstances such as when the "[f]ailure to disclose the news information will create an imminent risk of death or serious bodily harm[.]" It is a revised version of a bill that failed in the legislature two years ago.

In the new bill, journalism is: 

gathering or obtaining news for publication in or with a newspaper, magazine, news media, press association, wire service, website or other professional medium or agency that has as one (1) of its principal functions the processing and researching of news intended for publication or for broadcast by a radio station or television network[.]

One must also be "employed by or . . . otherwise in a news gathering capacity with" such a "professional medium or agency" to qualify.

The result? Professional journalists get special protection, while regular citizens do not. If a reporter at the Casper Star Tribune publishes an anonymously sourced story about corruption in the government, he generally cannot be forced in court to disclose his sources. But if a citizen who does not regularly gather or obtain news presents the same anonymously sourced information through his personal Twitter account, he does not qualify for protection and can be compelled to reveal his sources in court. (Refusing to do so is generally punished with contempt, and if the bill passes the citizen journalist may be jailed until he relents or until the government gets tired of trying.)

Learn more about the bill in Steve Klein's most recent blog