North Carolina’s broad shield statute covers nonconfidential as well as confidential information, as illustrated by the trial court decisions cited above and in endnote 5. It protects both published and unpublished information. It covers a reporter’s notes, audio recordings, story drafts, videotape recordings, photographs, outtakes of audio recordings and videotapes, e-mails and other communications. One trial court has held that the shield statute protects a newspaper from having to disclose to a murder defendant the IP addresses or other identifying information of anonymous contributors to the newspaper’s website.
