Jim Taricani (August 12, 1949 – June 21, 2019) was an American reporter, who served a sentence of six months of home confinement for refusing a court order to divulge a source.

Biography

Taricani, an investigative reporter for

WJAR WJAR (channel 10) is a television station in Providence, Rhode Island, United States, affiliated with NBC. Owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, the station has studios on Kenney Drive in Cranston, Rhode Island (shared with Telemundo owned-and-ope ...

television, an

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...

affiliate in

Cranston, Rhode Island Cranston, once known as Pawtuxet, is a city in Providence County, Rhode Island. The official population of the city in the 2020 United States Census was 82,934, making it the second largest in the state. The center of population of Rhode Island i ...

, refused to reveal who leaked a surveillance tape to him. He was convicted of criminal contempt of court on November 18, 2004, and sentenced on December 9, 2004, to six months of home confinement. The tape was used during a municipal corruption probe of then-Providence Mayor Vincent "Buddy" Cianci known as

Operation Plunder Dome Operation Plunder Dome was an undercover investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation into political corruption within the government of the City of Providence, Rhode Island. The operation first became public when the FBI executed a searc ...

. He lectured at journalism schools throughout the country and worked with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press to urge Congressional passage of a federal shield law for reporters. Taricani retired in April 2014. He died on June 21, 2019. Taricani was the recipient of a heart transplant in 1996. He was a volunteer spokesperson for the Rhode Island branch of the

American Heart Association The American Heart Association (AHA) is a nonprofit organization in the United States that funds cardiovascular medical research, educates consumers on healthy living and fosters appropriate cardiac care in an effort to reduce disability and death ...

References

External links

Taricani ordered confined to home on criminal contempt charge

Reporter gets 6 months home confinement

Dodd Introduces Federal Shield Law
American investigative journalists American television reporters and correspondents Journalists imprisoned for refusing to reveal sources 1949 births 2019 deaths Journalists from Rhode Island {{US-journalist-1940s-stub