Branzburg Vs. HayesBranzburg Vs. HayesThe case of Branzburg vs. Hayes all began in 1969, when a Louisville Kentucky reporter by the name of Branzburg wrote a story, in the Courier-Journal, which described how two local residences made hashish marijuana. The article went into great detail and revealed many facts, including the amount of money the two made on selling the hashish to the public. The article also featured pictures of the two individuals hands working with a plant like substance and was identified for readers as hashish in the caption under the picture. Branzburg was in agreement with the drug dealers and promised them he would not reveal their real names or identities in the article.
After the article was published, Branzburg was immediately subpoenaed by the Jefferson County Court system. The court demeaned that he name the two individuals featured in the article, but he stood strong and refused to give up their names like he had promised them. Branzburg argued that the Kentucky Privilege Statute passed in 1962 protected him from having to give up the names.(1) He also argued that the First Amendment and Kentucky constitution, (Sections 1,2, and 8) protected his right not to disclose the information of the two individuals identities.(2) However, the Kentucky courts fought back arguing that the Kentucky Privilege Statute didnt allow a reporter to refuse to testify about things they saw, or not disclose the names of people they were in contact with. Branzburg then took his case to the Kentucky appeals court, which ruled against him once again. He continued
Worst of all for Branzburg and the other men, the Court decided the name of the individuals in the article was fictitious. They would not reveal the identities of the men in the article nor would I identify them. Neither would I give them specific information, let alone name the men that had a connection to Bill Branzburg. It would have been obvious from the headline of the newspaper. Branzburg, who at one point was in the middle of a major political campaign with Bob Dole, claimed he was involved in the “war on drugs.” What did it all mean? Branzburg was still a Senator and a candidate for the State House. For the next 25 years, he spent $1 million to pay for his political activities. I remember how much he made out to the media.
For some time after his story went negative, Branzburg decided to go public with his story. However, it has only been a few months to an almost a year since it has been public and to his fans, some of them were so eager to get Branzburg out of line that they started posting videos all over the country and even in cities and towns and small states. He was doing things at a very high level that nobody in the public knew about before all of this happened. The public never knew more about what Branzburg was up to. People who knew the story did all of the necessary paperwork, such as signing affidavits in front of a judges, going before a grand jury, getting interviews done. Now, one should never guess what Branzburg had in mind before he published the story and what he wants out of the story. The only thing that would have given the public at least some indication of what he wanted to achieve, was the public’s understanding of Branzburg’s record. There were so many more things that he didn’t want to have to do and thus he refused to release the information to the public.
However, once this post was published, Branzburg took to twitter to announce their decision. He did get a lot of calls and emails. He didn’t go around calling people, at least not the public. What would he do? It is possible Branzburg would announce to the world that he plans to release the article within the next 10 days.(3)
The public had no clue about that. The public wasn’t ready to talk about anything but the story he had just reported. So even though the public learned about the story on the internet shortly after it was published, Branzburg posted the story to his Facebook page. (4)
He was even called a hero and thanked by everyone. If the public knows that many people of the people in Bill Branzburg’s picture got the information he wanted, some of it might have to go somewhere else.
But, then, if the public knew too much more about Branzburg and all this, he only released the story so that they could look at how people felt. Who could not see this story? We do know what we know and even if we all knew there were two of us, each one of us was happy to give each other information that might be used in some important piece of information about him that he wanted to share. To be able to share information is to go out for the fight.
This article by Branzburg was put up on his Facebook page, a few days later, in