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Telegram & Gazette — Your right to know
- By: ASNE staff
- On: 08/07/2007 15:59:58
- In: Shield law editorials
Congress should pass federal shield law
Telegram & Gazette, Worcester, Mass.
Aug. 5, 2007
A federal “shield law” enabling journalists to gather news on sensitive issues without fear of prosecution or incarceration has been given a welcome boost by the U.S.
Congress should pass federal shield law
Telegram & Gazette, Worcester, Mass.
Aug. 5, 2007
A federal “shield law” enabling journalists to gather news on sensitive issues without fear of prosecution or incarceration has been given a welcome boost by the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee.
The legislation, which had been in danger of foundering over the definition of “journalist,” got a favorable report Wednesday and is expected to be considered by the full House after the August break.
Recent Supreme Court rulings have underscored the need for explicit protection for reporters who must keep a source’s identity confidential in order to gather information.
While there is no explicit constitutional protection, it is implicit in the First Amendment prohibition on laws that abridge freedom of the press.
The push for a shield law is not about protecting journalists. It is about safeguarding reporters’ ability to root out sensitive information and, hence, is about the public’s right to know.
Without the ability to assure confidentiality to insiders positioned to know of malfeasance in high places, journalists’ efforts to expose wrongdoers to the light of public scrutiny may become exercises in futility.
Explicit legal protection for reporter-source confidentiality is not a radical idea. Shield laws of various kinds already are in effect in 31 states and the District of Columbia.
The bipartisan federal bill, the Free Flow of Information Act, is intended to extend the same protection to reporters on the federal level. (The bill does not guarantee confidentiality in cases involving national security, homicide or bodily harm, trade secrets or revelation of individuals’ private health or financial data.)
Although the incarceration of journalist Judith Miller in the CIA leak case brought the issue to national attention, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has documented dozens of cases in which “journalists are being asked to operate as investigators for the government and litigants.”
As we have observed before, newspapers and broadsides were highly effective in the years leading up to the American Revolution in exposing British “oppressions and usurpations” and rallying support for the revolutionary cause a lesson in the crucial role of a free press the Founders enshrined in the Bill of Rights. Congress can codify a significant aspect of that freedom by passing the Free Flow of Information Act.