Alecia Swasy, a Wall Street Journal reporter, got a call in August 1991 from a former Procter & Gamble manager. He informed her that the police wanted to know what their previous conversations regarding P&G were about. The reason why this was happening because he was being investigated by Cincinnati fraud squad investigator Gary Armstrong. He was a part-time security guard for P&G and happened to have records of recent long-distance conversations, some which included calls with Alecia Swasy (Boatright, 2011, p.50).
Swacy had published two stories regarding troubles within P&G that angered CEO Edward Artz. One article involved the executive vice president B. Jurgen Hintz’s resignation due to internal problems with the company. The second article involved the selling of product lines by P&G. Swacy believed Artz was giving false information regarding Hintz resignation and giving the correct information to other news outlets to tarnish Wall Street Journal (Boatright, 2011, p.50).
When the WSJ articles came out, Artz began an investigation within the company to search phone calls made by P8G to see who the whistleblower was. To further investigate, they were granted a grand jury …show more content…
Ohio laws from 1967 and 1974 were used to defend their cases in court. The laws state that giving away trade secrets is a crime and that employees could not give away important information without the employer’s permission. While these laws do protect trade secrets and such, it was found that reporters were protected by the First Amendment. Ohio courts found P&G’s complaints questionable as the Ohio laws up to interpretation and did little to define what it meant for cases like P&G’s complaint. They also indicated a possible violation of the First Amendment against reporters, but P&G defended itself by stating it was only looking at people related to their case (Boatright, 2011,
Swacy had published two stories regarding troubles within P&G that angered CEO Edward Artz. One article involved the executive vice president B. Jurgen Hintz’s resignation due to internal problems with the company. The second article involved the selling of product lines by P&G. Swacy believed Artz was giving false information regarding Hintz resignation and giving the correct information to other news outlets to tarnish Wall Street Journal (Boatright, 2011, p.50).
When the WSJ articles came out, Artz began an investigation within the company to search phone calls made by P8G to see who the whistleblower was. To further investigate, they were granted a grand jury …show more content…
Ohio laws from 1967 and 1974 were used to defend their cases in court. The laws state that giving away trade secrets is a crime and that employees could not give away important information without the employer’s permission. While these laws do protect trade secrets and such, it was found that reporters were protected by the First Amendment. Ohio courts found P&G’s complaints questionable as the Ohio laws up to interpretation and did little to define what it meant for cases like P&G’s complaint. They also indicated a possible violation of the First Amendment against reporters, but P&G defended itself by stating it was only looking at people related to their case (Boatright, 2011,