A New York judge has upheld an earlier ruling barring the New York Times from publishing or covering documents written by a lawyer for the conservative group Project Veritas, the Times reported.

Why it matters: The ruling, which now also requires the paper to get rid of physical and electronic copies of the documents, is "a highly unusual and astonishingly broad injunction against a news organization," the paper said in a Friday editorial.

NY Supreme Court, noting that "'Hit and run' journalism" is not protected, rules New York Times may have "improper[ly]" obtained PV's attorney-client memos before publishing them "ahead of the deadline it had set," and ORDERS the Times to (1) return the memos to PV; (2) destroy all copies of the memos it has, including removing them "from the internet"; (3) retrieve copies of the memos it provided to third parties including Columbia Journalism Professor Bill Grueskin; (4) not use the memos in PV's defamation lawsuit against the Times; and (5) confirm its compliance within 10 days.  Mer

Half a century ago, the Supreme Court settled the matter of when a court can stop a newspaper from publishing. In 1971, the Nixon administration attempted to block The Times and The Washington Post from publishing classified Defense Department documents detailing the history of the Vietnam War — the so-called Pentagon Papers. Faced with an asserted threat to the nation’s security, the Supreme Court sided with the newspapers. “Without an informed and free press, there cannot be an enlightened people,” Justice Potter Stewart wrote in a concurring opinion.