Contempt of Court Quotes
There has been a constant conflict between the government and the press regarding the right of a journalist to refuse to disclose his/her sources for a story or to reveal his/her notes or outtakes. Reporters would sometimes be subpoenaed and if they refused to testify or disclose the subpoenaed information, they could be held in contempt of court and fined, jailed or both. However, one of the major reasons reporters have been able to get information on the malfeasance and incompetence of government is that leakers and whistleblowers have been willing to provide information to the press is that they are confident that the press will not disclose the source. The courts have ruled that journalists have no special rights regarding subpoenas, so the outcome of the conflict depends on the political decision of the administration. Risen had been subpoenaed during the George W. Bush Administration and he and the New York Times had fought the case all the way up to the Supreme Court which ruled, that Risen had no special right wo withhold information about a possible crime. That seemed to leave Risen with his “two choices”.
There had not been an audit in over 200 years, and many of the records are missing.
The book was very critical of the way capitol punishment is meted out in Singapore. The Singapore Attorney General’s Office then claimed that the book had brought disrespect on the courts of Singapore by being so critical and tried him for “criminal defamation”. Shadrake was fined $30,000 and when he planned on publishing a second edition he was tried again and threatened with Jail. The fundamental problem is that if part of a nation’s government is corrupt, ineffective or incompetent and someone tells that to the public, there will certainly be less respect for the institution. So demanding respect, is tantamount to abandoning freedom of speech in general and criticism of the government in particular,
In most jurisdictions grand jury proceedings are secret. However it is common for the prosecutors to violate the law and leak the grand jury proceedings to bias the prospective jury pool towards a guilty verdict. Sometimes, the prosecutors will leak the proceedings to get headlines and news coverage.
The New York City comptroller was outraged by the new president of the Board of Alderman, former congressman Fiorello La Guardia, who later became mayor of New York. The two men clashed constantly, especially at meetings of the New York City Board of Estimate, where the comptroller made an unusual request of the chairman:
This quotation is typical of many constitutions in the sense that one part of the Constitution guarantees political freedom for all citizens and another part then makes so many exceptions that there are no guaranteed rights other than those the government wishes to give at any point of time. In this particular Constitution Article 10 does both, one right after the other. So Clause 1 gives the rights and Clause 2 explains how they can be taken away. For example, in 2008 university students were not allowed to join political parties.
There has been a constant conflict between the government and the press regarding the right of a journalist to refuse to disclose his/her sources for a story or to reveal his/her notes or outtakes. Reporters would sometimes be subpoenaed and if they refused to testify or disclose the subpoenaed information, they could be held in contempt of court and fined, jailed or both. However, one of the major reasons reporters have been able to get information on the malfeasance and incompetence of government is that leakers and whistleblowers have been willing to provide information to the press is that they are confident that the press will not disclose the source. The courts have ruled that journalists have no special rights regarding subpoenas, so the outcome of the conflict depends on the political decision of the administration. For the 2nd Obama administration, this has his announcement that the Justice Department would not jail reporters who ignored subpoenas. However many proponents of a free press, do not want to depend on the decision of the Attorney General in office and want Congress to pass a Shield Law for journalists.
