Declan, Your readers might be interested in knowing that many courts have been forced to deal with the question, "Who is a journalist?" over the years in circumstances similar to what appear to be Ms. Leggett's. Several states have laws, known as shield-laws, that specifically protect journalists from testifying in certain circumstances, and those laws often contain definitions of "journalist" or "reporter" or "media". In addition, the First Amendment provides a separate protection. In the statutory context, the courts are of course bound by the legislative definitions of who is a journalist. These definitions vary from state to state, but in most states depend upon some sort of professional affiliation. Under the First Amendment, however, courts have been much broader, focusing primarily on whether the person claiming the journalist's privilege had an intent to disseminate the information to the public **at the time s/he gathered it**. Bearing in mind the Supreme Court's admonition that "Freedom of the press is a 'fundamental personal right' which is not confined to newspapers and periodicals. It necessarily embraces pamphlets and leaflets. ... The press in its historic connotation comprehends every sort of publication which affords a vehicle of information and opinion,'" Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665, 704 (1972) (quoting Lovell v. City of Griffin, 303 U.S. 444, 450, 452 (1938)), courts have been unwilling to restrict press rights to the institutional press. Although the Supreme Court has never directly addressed the question, "Who is a journalist?" in the context of the journalist's privilege (indeed, the fear that courts would have to deal with it was part of the majority's rationale for *not* granting the privilege in the seminal Branzburg case), many federal courts have addressed it, with varying results depending on the circumstances. See, e.g., In re Madden, 151 F.3d 125 (3d Cir. 1998); Schoen v. Schoen, 5 F.3d 1289, 1293-94 (9th Cir. 1993); Von Bulow v. Von Bulow, 811 F.2d 136 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 481 U.S. 1015 (1987); Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee Corp., 563 F.2d 433 (10th Cir. 1977); Blum v. Schlegel, 150 F.R.D. 42 (W.D.N.Y. 1993); Apicella v. McNeil Labs., Inc., 66 F.R.D. 78, 84-85 (E.D.N.Y. 1975). This is not to say that answering the question is simple in any give circumstance, but simply to note that courts have been doing it for a long time. One other point that should be clarified in light of this post is that, in every jurisdiction, the journalist's privilege is a *qualified* privilege and yields to the needs of evidence-gathering in many cases. No one, not even a New York Times reporter [I use the NYT rather than Wired because we know that some would question your own status as a journalist :-) ], gets the privilege in every circumstance. The person attempting to force a journalist to testify in the face of the privilege simply has to show that 1) the information they seek is relevant to the lawsuit for which they are seeking it; 2) their suit is not frivolous; and 3) they have exhausted all other reasonable means of obtaining the information (or some other similar variation of this three-part test). So, even having a broad definition of "journalist" does not completely open the door to an unfettered right to refuse to testify. -Anuj Anuj C. Desai University of Wisconsin Law School 975 Bascom Mall Madison, WI 53706 acdesai@facstaff.wisc.edu **********