The One Thing We Wouldn’t Give Them

The One Thing We Wouldn’t Give Them

People often ask what it’s like to run an independent media company.

The truth is, if you publish long enough, and you publish honestly enough, eventually someone won’t like what you have to say.

For us, that happened relatively quickly.

When nuEra Cannabis, numed, the owners in the Fitzsimmons Family, and related entities filed their counterclaims against Joseph Phelan, they alleged that what we published was defamatory. During trial, their attorney attempted to walk through our reporting piece by piece.

If we wrote that someone had threatened to kill us, we produced the recording.

If we discussed financial transfers, we produced the wire records we relied upon.

If we reported that a witness claimed they had been bribed, that witness was prepared to testify.

Over and over, the response was the same:

“Asked and answered.”

Our reporting wasn’t based on rumors. It was based on documents, recordings, witnesses, and evidence we were prepared to stand behind.

Yet after examining our work, there was one thing the defense wanted more than anything else.

Not another recording.

Not another document.

Not another financial record.

They wanted the identities of the employees who had spoken to us.

Those were the people who described racism, sexism, retaliation, rule violations, and other workplace concerns. They came forward because they believed their identities would be protected.

As journalists, that promise mattered.

We asserted Illinois’ reporter’s privilege and placed the source list on a privilege log. We even offered to make the information available to the Court for in camera review if necessary, but we opposed disclosing the identities to the defendants because we believed doing so could expose those individuals to the very retaliation they feared.

The defense sought the list.

The Court declined to require its disclosure.

That moment has stayed with me.

Not because we “won” an argument.

Because it revealed something fundamental about journalism.

Everything else we published, we were willing to defend in the open.

The recordings.

The documents.

The financial records.

The witnesses.

We stood behind every factual assertion we made.

The only thing we refused to surrender was the identity of the people who trusted us.

To me, that’s what a reporter’s privilege is supposed to protect.

If someone wants to know whether employees genuinely feared retaliation, they don’t have to speculate.

Read what happened in open court.

The most aggressively contested information wasn’t a recording.

It wasn’t a bank wire.

It wasn’t a public filing.

It was a list of names.

Sometimes, the hardest-fought discovery request tells its own story.

Journalism is built on trust.

Documents can be replaced.

Recordings can be copied.

Evidence can be preserved.

But once a confidential source loses faith that a reporter will protect them, that trust is gone forever.

Whatever else happens in the future, I’m grateful that, when our First Amendment protections and reporter’s privilege were tested in a Cook County courtroom, the Court upheld our assertion of that privilege.

Some stories are about what you publish.

Others are about what you refuse to reveal.

I think the latter says more about your values than the former ever could.

We’ll continue to protect our sources.

Recordings can be authenticated. Documents can be produced. Financial records can be examined. Witnesses can testify.

But confidential sources are different. Once that trust is broken, it can never truly be restored.

In the end, what interested me most wasn’t what they challenged it was what they pursued the hardest. Not the recordings. Not the documents. Not the evidence we openly presented. They wanted the one thing they didn’t already have: the identities of the people who trusted us.

We’re grateful that the Court upheld our assertion of reporter’s privilege, allowing us to honor the commitment we made to those sources.

And we’re equally grateful that, after hearing all of the evidence, a unanimous jury rejected the counterclaims brought against us.

Some people measure journalism by what it publishes. We measure it by what it refuses to betray. That’s a standard we’ll continue to uphold, no matter who asks us to do otherwise.