Spectrum — Need for federal shield law

• By: ASNE staff
• On: 07/16/2007 16:50:35
• In: Shield law editorials

Spectrum, St. George, Utah
June 12, 2007

There is no existing federal law to protect journalists from being held in contempt of court for refusing to divulge the names of sources or testify in regards to unpublished information in federal court - but it is time there was one.

We've advocated for this before, but with the reintroduction of the Free Flow of Information Act on May 2, a federal shield law should be enacted with it to protect working journalists, editors, publishers or any other public watchdog. A shield law would safeguard those investigating wrongdoing of the government or private business sector who have credible, yet volatile, sources whose identities need to be kept anonymous for reasons that may include, but are not limited to, life endangerment.

Such a law would have qualified privileges to journalists to keep the identities confidential of whistle-blowers who reveal abuse. In 1972, the Supreme Court ruled in Branzburg v. Hayes that newsgathering did qualify for First Amendment protection. Yet, the United States shamefully stakes its claim to not having a shield law when confidential sources have proven to be essential to the public good.

Consider how the citizenry has benefited from exposed improprieties in Enron, Abu Ghraib, Walter Reed Army Medical Center - and let's not forget - the 2000 Olympic bribery scandal here in Utah. Without a shield law, the trend of judges and prosecutors increasingly attempting to put journalists on the stand to reveal their sources will persist and undermine the press's ability to get information. Even now, at least 45 cases in the last four years have involved reporters being coerced to uncover their sources under threat of a contempt charge and jail time, according to the Justice Department.

This is not what the Founding Fathers envisioned when they said Congress shall make no laws abridging the freedom of the press. They knew, as much as any American who values a free and independent press, that provision was paramount as part of the checks and balances system over government - its elected and hired officials in power - for democracy to stay intact and functioning as a "government of the people, by the people, for the people."

There was as much a need for an autonomous watchdog then, free from the purse strings of bureaucracy, as there is now - not only for the sake of the constituency that has elected representation, but for that representative body to be administered without corruption and undue influence.

Will a shield law avert governmental fraud? Of course it won't, but it certainly will stave off the attempts to make journalists an extension of law enforcement and give them the freedom they need to hold government accountable.