Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Fri, 13 Aug 2010 17:26:49 PDT Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100811/17332810596.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100811/17332810596.shtml sued the student for defamation, after an article that was critical of the music teacher was published. Thankfully, a judge has dismissed the lawsuit, noting that "nothing written by the student was false, defamatory or negligent." Many people seem to feel that anything they don't like that's published about them must be defamation, but that's not how it works. Even so, it seems pretty extreme for a teacher to go so far as to file a lawsuit against a student journalist. Nice to see that this lawsuit went nowhere fast.

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]]> quite-the-lesson http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100811/17332810596 Fri, 17 Jul 2009 14:28:55 PDT Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090716/2306425573.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090716/2306425573.shtml witnessed a murder while doing a photojournalism project. While police were trying to get information from him, he invoked California's shield law for journalists, allowing them to protect "sources." The case is complex on a number of different levels -- from the fact that the kid is a student, not a full-time journalist, to the fact that the information on the murder wasn't directly a source from whom he was learning info, but something he just witnessed. The other complicating factor is the idea that the student could put his life in danger by revealing what he saw. Either way, a judge has ruled that, indeed, California's shield law protects this student and he does not need to reveal what he saw. The police are not happy, and referred to the student as a "coward," which seems a bit harsh.

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]]> journalism-in-action http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20090716/2306425573