At least one Wisconsin county official wants to warn any journalists who cover the upcoming release of a regional water quality study: Publish the county's news release summarizing the findings in its entirety, without any alterations, or risk criminal prosecution. The Lafayette County Land Conservation Committee plans to vote tomorrow on the resolution, which would warn reporters to print the upcoming news release without any edits or alterations or face prosecution. It isn't clear which committee member or members wrote the resolution or whether they sought legal advice before proposing it, but the effort looks blatantly unconstitutional, according to experts in media law. "All I can say is: Wow," University of Wisconsin, Madison, journalism instructor Kathleen Bartzen Culver said in an email to the Associated Press. "I am astonished that a local government would find it appropriate, much less legal, to threaten a news organization with prosecution for doing what they are constitutionally protected in doing — representing the public interest by seeking, analyzing and reporting information.
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