Calling Massachusetts a national outlier, state Senate passes ‘shield’ law protecting journalists

The Massachusetts Senate on Thursday passed language that would create a so-called shield law to help protect journalists from being forced to reveal their confidential sources, embracing a safeguard that exists in the vast majority of other states.

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Senators unanimously voted to add the measure to wider legislation designed to expand the state’s public records law.

The amendment, filed by Senator Rebecca Rausch, would in many instances bar judges, grand juries, and others from forcing a reporter to identify a source.

A court could compel a journalist to turn over that information only if there is “clear and convincing evidence” that it meets certain standards, including if there is an “overriding public interest” in a source being disclosed or if that information is “not obtainable” from another source, according to the proposal.

As of last year, Massachusetts was one of only nine states in the country without a reporters shield law, according to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

“We need to fix this problem,” Rausch said from the Senate floor Thursday, according to a transcript of her remarks. “As we see repeated attacks on the press, we need to fix it now.”

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Groups — including the Massachusetts Newspaper Publishers Association, of which The Boston Globe is a member — have pressed lawmakers to embrace a version of a shield law, arguing that news reporters and organizations have faced steep legal costs to protect their sources.

The group pointed to the experience of Fred Rutberg, the former president and publisher of The Berkshire Eagle, which spent $16,000 in legal fees fighting a subpoena in 2022 stemming from an investigative story about the Springfield Diocese’s handling of clergy abuse allegations, according to the association.

“Without some safeguard for confidential source identities and sensitive newsgathering material, the press cannot fulfill its constitutionally recognized watchdog role,” Gabe Rottman, vice president of policy for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, wrote last year.

The Senate embraced the language on the second to last day of scheduled formal sessions for the year. House and Senate leaders will have to negotiate a final version of the wider public records-related package — including whether to keep the shield law proposal — in closed-door talks that could bleed later into the year.

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Material from the State House News Service was included in this report.