Media Criticism, Chicago-Style : The campaign to stifle journalists in Cook County and the White House

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Who is a journalist? Ordinarily, that's something for readers and viewers to decide. But recently in Chicago and in Washington, we've seen attempts by the powerful to dictate who is—and who is not—a "real" journalist.

For the past several months, students at The Innocence Project, a program at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, have come under fire from Cook County, Ill. Prosecutors aren't happy with their habit of turning up evidence demonstrating that defendants have been wrongly convicted. They've allegedly exposed the wrongful conviction of Anthony McKinney, a Chicago man jailed for 31 years on a false confession.

Discomfited prosecutors have responded by subpoenaing everything related to the students' investigation about the McKinney case: notes, interview records and even classroom grades. According to the prosecutors, the students aren't journalists, but an "investigative agency." This is a distinction that has legal bite because journalists' notes are protected under an Illinois journalist shield law.

You'll want to read the whole article. Yet another excellent one by Professor Glenn Reynolds. For the views of the Cook Cook State's Attorney on gun ownership watch the video. For a look at the man who slates all the judges in Cook County .