2025 Session Last amended: 1998 session

§ 595.023 — Disclosure Prohibited

Plain-Language Summary

This section prohibits courts, grand juries, and government bodies from forcing journalists to reveal their sources or hand over unpublished notes, recordings, or other work materials.

595.023 DISCLOSURE PROHIBITED.

Except as provided in section 595.024, no person who is or has been directly engaged in the gathering, procuring, compiling, editing, or publishing of information for the purpose of transmission, dissemination or publication to the public shall be required by any court, grand jury, agency, department or branch of the state, or any of its political subdivisions or other public body, or by either house of the legislature or any committee, officer, member, or employee thereof, to disclose in any proceeding the person or means from or through which information was obtained, or to disclose any unpublished information procured by the person in the course of work or any of the person’s notes, memoranda, recording tapes, film or other reportorial data whether or not it would tend to identify the person or means through which the information was obtained.

History:

1973 c 735 s 3; 1986 c 444; 1998 c 357 s 1

History: History: 1973 c 735 s 3; 1986 c 444; 1998 c 357 s 1

Practical Notes

This section establishes that Minnesota values press freedom and the public’s right to information. It provides the policy basis for the journalist shield law that follows in section 595.023.

Source: Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes