WDAM's parent company, Raycom Media, and 30 additional media organizations including the Society for Professional Journalists, are petitioning the Mississippi Supreme Court to intervene in a lower court's decision that prevents the South Mississippi television station from airing videos showing abuse at the Forrest County Juvenile Detention Center in Hattiesburg. The video shows six juveniles in a "physical exchange" with detention center staff, the SPJ reports.
On Dec. 30, Forrest County Youth Court Judge Mike McPhail ordered an injunction that prohibits WDAM or any other news outlet from disclosing, publishing or broadcasting the tape saying that WDAM failed to provide enough evidence for the need to show the video. McPhail also ruled that the station obtained the tapes unlawfully and the inmates' privacy needed to be protected. WDAM agreed to blur the youth's faces when airing the video to protect privacy.
"The prosecutor and judge fail to explain how the inmates' privacy is invaded when their identities and faces are blurred," SPJ President Hagit Limor wrote in a statement. "This smacks of unlawful prior restraint. If we allow courts to demand 'evidence' of a need to show video, next they'll want proof of a need to tell any story. That would slip sadly into a new arena of the courts restricting press freedoms."
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