NASHVILLE (AP) - Nashville attorney Alfred H. Knight III, an expert on news media law who helped craft Tennessee's open government statutes, has died.

Knight's efforts on behalf of the news media resulted in the Society of Professional Journalists giving him its First Amendment Award in 1984.

The 74-year-old lawyer died Monday night from what is believed to be an infection that stopped his heart, family members told The Tennessean.

Knight represented the newspaper and other news organizations in efforts to open government records, meetings and courtrooms.

"He was probably the best First Amendment lawyer, certainly in the state, and maybe in the entire country," said attorney Alan D. Johnson, who worked with him at the Nashville firm Willis & Knight.

Knight is credited with helping to write Tennessee laws that require government meetings to be open to the public and protect journalists from being forced to disclose information obtained in newsgathering to law enforcement.

He won courtroom victories that forced federal prosecutors to release basic arrest information and led the state Legislature to forbid public bodies from casting secret ballots.

"What I like most about the practice of law is helping people who need help," Knight said in a 2001 interview for the Nashville Bar Association's oral history project. "It's just that simple."

Knight was a graduate of Cornell University and Vanderbilt Law School.