Categories: OLD Media Moves

Court rules AIG papers won’t be released to reporter

The U.S. Court of Appeals ruled Friday that documents prepared by an examiner of government-backed American International Group Inc. are not public and won’t be released to a reporter who requested them.

The ruling reverses a lower court’s decision to grant the journalist access.

Tom Schoenberg of Bloomberg News writes, “The documents were created by James Cole, then a lawyer at Bryan Cave LLP in Washington, who was hired by AIG as part of a $126 million settlement over regulators’ accusations that the insurer helped clients such as PNC Financial Services Group Inc. inflate profit.

“Cole, who is now the Justice Department’s deputy attorney general, reviewed transactions to determine if clients used them to violate generally accepted accounting principles.

“Sue Reisinger, a reporter for Corporate Counsel and American Lawyer magazines, asked the court to release the reports.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.