Seattle Post-Intelligencer — Senate should act on federal media shield bill (opinion)

• By: ASNE staff
• On: 05/08/2008 12:36:09
• In: Shield law editorials

Seattle Post-Intelligencer
By Robert Rivard, guest columnist
April 25, 2008

WASHINGTON -- The fact that three different U.S. senators are seeking to become the next president affords our democracy a rare opportunity to strengthen our shared First Amendment Rights.

I'm talking about the right to free speech and free press that every U.S. citizen enjoys, thanks to the Founding Fathers and the enduring Bill of Rights they crafted as the foundation of our Constitution.

The First Amendment wasn't written only to protect the press; it was written to protect everyone from the oppression of government.

When a reporter has to choose between revealing the identity of a source or going to jail or paying stiff fines, it's the reader who faces eroding freedoms along with the journalist.

This country has witnessed an unprecedented assault on reporters in recent years, a campaign executed by secretive and embattled Bush administration officials, overzealous prosecutors and activist federal judges.

Reporters might be in the crosshairs and the headlines, but the real target is the free flow of information, an essential building block of our democracy. The real challenge is to your right to know what your government is doing versus what it says it is doing.

Last week, all three presidential candidates brought their campaigns to a national convention of newspaper publishers and editors meeting in the nation's capital.

All three pledged their support for a federal law that would protect journalists from the government compelling them to reveal their sources.

It's important, the bill's bipartisan sponsors in the House told newspaper executives just prior to Hillary Clinton's speech, that the Senate move now to vote on the Free Flow of Information Act, which was passed by an overwhelming majority, 398-21, in the House last October.

It's heartening that even conservatives see the need for a so-called federal shield law. They, too, know that oftentimes the only real-time check on government is the press, through disclosure of illegal, unethical or otherwise inappropriate and often secret policies, programs and activities.

A case in point is how our military and intelligence agencies have treated detainees in the government's so-called war on terror. Even the most ardent proponents of extreme interrogation methods must acknowledge that this national debate would never have taken place without press disclosures of overseas clandestine CIA prisons, renditions of prisoners seized extrajudicially to third countries where torture is practiced, and the organized abuse, torture and widespread mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners.

Disclosure of secret government programs are often controversial and almost always provoke a backlash in some quarters, but history almost always sides against government and in favor of an open society and a free press.

Watergate, the Pentagon Papers, the secret arms program to a fundamentalist Iranian regime that helped facilitate the secret U.S. war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua -- all these stories were first disclosed in the press. None of these disclosures proved harmful to our national security.

History is likely to render the same judgment when enough years have passed to look objectively at the Bush administration's controversial policies and actions.

Very few leaks of classified secrets damage the national interest, but almost always do serve to enlighten an otherwise uninformed public and force the government to act within the law.

There are times when the national interest is at stake, and on such occasions, the bill gives the courts the necessary authority to weigh national security interests against the people's right to know, without inappropriate disclosure of classified secrets in a courtroom.

The bill's supporters believe the time is right for a vote in the Senate after months of delays. One key vote will be Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.

Cornyn was an early supporter of the bill, but as administration officials stepped up their opposition, he joined with those expressing concern with the bill as written

It shouldn't be overly difficult to craft compromise language that addresses his and the concerns of other senators so that the larger task of ensuring a free press and an informed society can be achieved.

Every reader who values his or her right to know what their own government is doing here and around the world should press for an affirmative vote this year before the November general election and before an otherwise rare opportunity is lost.

Once the votes are cast and a new president is sworn in, such support for open government will be at risk.

Robert Rivard is editor of the San Antonio Express-News.