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The Nevada Supreme Court has applied the state’s shield law to journalists who work for online-only news outlets in the case of a Virginia City blogger who was sued for libel by a county commissioner and brothel owner.
“Just because a newspaper can exist online, it does not mean it ceases to be a newspaper,” Chief Justice Mark Gibbons wrote in the court’s opinion. “To hold otherwise would be to create an absurd result in direct contradiction of the rules of statutory interpretation.”
It involves Sam Toll, who was sued by Commission Lance Gilman over Toll’s report in The Storey Teller alleging Gilman does not reside within Storey County because he doesn’t live at the Mustang Ranch.
Read more about the case in The Nevada Independent and This is Reno, both of which are online-one publishers.
In the ruling, however, the justices ordered the case returned to the district court for a determination of whether this particular case qualifies Toll to be protected under the shield law from revealing confidential sources.