The Real Story Behind the Nation's First Shield Law: Maryland, 1894–1897

Abstract

Blame it on H.L. Mencken. His unsupported account of how Maryland adopted the nation's first shield law in 1896 has been repeated in books and articles for seventy-five years, but it was a fabrication based on shoddy reporting. This article will show the law was not prompted, as Mencken claimed, by the jailing of Baltimore Sun reporter John T. Morris but by the criminal indictments of reporters John S. Shriver and Elisha J. Edwards in 1894. Passage of the law was not connected to local events but was sparked by a scandal unfolding in Washington. The drive for a shield law was not isolated to Maryland but was part of a national lobbying campaign that included talk of a federal shield law. Finally, that campaign did not emanate from The Baltimore Sun but from The Baltimore American.