In March 2014 the Tar Heel was joined by the Raleigh News & Observer and Capitol Broadcasting Company, which owns three television and radio stations in the Research Triangle area, in opposing the district attorney's motion to extend the seal another 60 days. They argued that the order was not justified by a compelling interest on the state's part, and that some of the orders had been issued before the records covered by them had been created, meaning the argument for sealing them was speculative. During a hearing on the motion, the district attorney filed a more specific accounting of what investigative work had been done, allowing the media to report for the first time on what police had searched in the immediate aftermath of the crime. "Eighteen months goes by and no one's been charged and no one's been arrested," said a lawyer for the Tar Heel. "The public has the right to assume the trail has gone cold, or it's not being investigated in a diligent manner." In response, the district attorney's office argued that releasing the detailed records at that point would definitely hinder the investigation, and the records remained under seal.
