By Lalitha Viswanathan
While journalists serve as storytellers in democracies, media lawyers serve as those journalists’ essential defenders. They enforce legal infrastructure, from fighting for public records to shielding the confidential sources that allow investigative reporting to flourish in an increasingly litigious environment.
Lin Weeks is a senior staff attorney at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP), where he works in litigation, news gathering and transparency issues. With a deep background in First Amendment law, including four years directing the First Amendment Clinic at the University of Virginia School of Law, Weeks helps lead the RCFP’s mission to provide pro bono legal support to journalists and news organizations.
That pro bono work can include direct representation of journalists who have been served with a subpoena for their confidential sources or unpublished notes, working with coalitions to challenge laws infringing on news gathering rights, writing amicus briefs in cases where the outcome might affect the press, and working with journalists and documentary filmmakers to vet their work before publication.
While the First Amendment remains a cornerstone of democracy, the ability of journalists to report the news is being challenged on several fronts. For a freelancer or a small-town reporter, a single aggressive court order can be a career-ending event without pro bono support from organizations like the RCFP.
By exploring how RCFP defends newsrooms, we aim to gain a deeper understanding of the legal infrastructure that allows ethical, investigative journalism to hold power to account without fear.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and concision.
When you’re looking at cases across the country, you obviously aren’t able to be part of every single one. What’s the test that RCFP uses to decide where the brief could have the most impact? Is it usually about specific journalists? Or are you looking for opportunities to set broader First Amendment precedents?
For amicus briefs, we’re looking for cases where the interests of the press are going to be affected by the outcome of the litigation, but where those interests might not be fully addressed by the parties. So, for instance, if there’s a defamation case where a public figure is suing someone who criticized them on social media, that’s a situation where neither party is a journalist, but the court’s decision could still impact journalists who are working in that state for that jurisdiction. So that would be a prime candidate for us to offer our assistance to the court as a guest.
And just to give another example, if one specific news organization sues the government over the government’s conduct, it can be helpful for the court to understand how that conduct might affect other journalists or other new news organizations who aren’t in that specific lawsuit. So that’s another type of case where we might write an amicus brief.
On the topic of defamation, with high stakes defamation suits aimed at investigative outlets, how do you advise journalists on the legal line between reporting and liability?
When we work with journalists to vet their stories, what we’re assessing is risk. So one of the first things we look at is the subject of the reporting. Are they someone who is powerful, wealthy, litigious, likely to sue? Have they been sued for defamation before?
And we also look at: what’s the content of the claim being made? Has it been fact checked, and if it were incorrect, would it meet the standard for defamation in that jurisdiction, subject, of course, to the limitations of the First Amendment. For a public figure, for a public official, in order for a statement to be defamatory, there needs to be a knowing untruthfulness or reckless disregard for the truth of the content of the statement.
What do you think the biggest challenge is in defending a reporter’s article against subpoenas, or their sources against subpoenas?
One challenge is that there is a patchwork of protections for journalists, source and unpublished news gathering material across the country. So for journalists who are traveling for work or whose reporting takes them to multiple states, it can sometimes be tricky to determine which states’ protections will apply. Some states have relatively strong reporter shield laws, other states not so much.
There’s a lot of conflict between law enforcement and journalists at protests. Legally, what do you think is the most misunderstood aspect of a journalist’s right to record in public places?
I think one of the challenges that our organization has been working on is making sure that law enforcement knows that going into a policing protest, that journalists have a right to record. Our policy team here has been doing some outreach directly to government and to law enforcement to try and spread the message that ‘just because you’re issuing a dispersal order that might affect protesters, that doesn’t cut down on the First Amendment rights of those who are there to document what’s going on.’
You work with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and litigation with different journalists. With the legal process of obtaining records becoming more difficult and expensive, how does your organization work to lower the barrier to entry for these people trying to hold the local government accountable, especially for smaller newsrooms or freelance journalists? Is there a more localized effort to help smaller newsrooms with these FOIA requests.
When we choose cases for litigation, what we’re looking for is to help journalists do their work more effectively. Our assistance is free, and we’re also looking for cases where we can develop the law favorably.
When we sue a government agency for public records, we’re hoping that by winning the case that there will be some news for RCFP that comes out as a result. But we’re also hoping that, if there’s a written opinion, it’ll set some precedent that helps journalists down the line get the public records that they want or need to do their work without even needing to find a lawyer. So two goals, there.
On the local level, we have what’s called our Local Legal Initiative, which is currently in seven states. Those attorneys work with journalists in their states, oftentimes at smaller outlets, often on public records matters.
Looking to the future, what do you see as the most critical frontier that the new generation of media lawyers will need to defend, say in 10 years? Are there any trends you’re seeing right now?
It’s tough to predict because the landscape of journalism has changed so much over the past few years. I think government transparency and making sure that the government doesn’t interfere with news gathering rights and doesn’t take on policies that will chill speech will continue to be a huge focus of media law going forward.
A lot of the questions that we deal with basically boil down to, is it important for our public institutions and public officials to be accountable to their communities? And since we elect our representatives, and since we are responsible for funding the government as taxpayers, and since we submit to the government’s authority on any number of things, it’s going to remain very important to assist journalists in informing the public about what the government is doing.
Lalitha Viswanathan is a 2025-26 fellow at the Center for Journalism Ethics and a senior in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
The Center for Journalism Ethics encourages the highest standards in journalism ethics worldwide. We foster vigorous debate about ethical practices in journalism and provide a resource for producers, consumers and students of journalism.