Clare Locke boasts about ‘killing stories’ and some of America’s most prominent journalists have worked with them.
by LACHLAN CARTWRIGHT, The Daily Beast 
07.19.18.
One of television’s most powerful men, 60 Minutes Executive Producer Jeff Fager, hired a law firm that boasts about “killing stories” for a Washington Post investigation into him, three sources familiar with the matter told The Daily Beast.
The story was a deep dive into what CBS managers knew about former anchor Charlie Rose’s alleged sexual misconduct, but due to the aggressive tactics of law firm Clare Locke, the sources said, the story was “effectively neutered.”
Clare Locke is the creation of husband and wife team Tom Clare and Elizabeth “Libby” Locke. “Some of Libby’s biggest defamation ‘wins’ are stories the public will never hear about,” her website says. They have litigated against Rolling Stone, The New York Times, Katie Couric, CNN, and Gawker, to name a few.
And despite being retained by some of the biggest names in media, Locke has publicly backed President Trump’s call to “open up” libel laws and attacked shield laws that protect journalists from disclosing their sources in court. “How are you supposed to prove as a defamation plaintiff that the journalist knew what they were writing was false if you don’t have access to the identities of their sources? It’s really problematic,” she said in a speech last year to the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group.
Locke continued, saying she wanted to “talk a little bit about why the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of freedom of the press.”
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