Buffalo News — Protecting public information

• By: ASNE staff
• On: 07/23/2008 17:19:34
• In: Shield law editorials

Senators can serve their constituents by approving a federal ‘shield law’

The Buffalo (N.Y.) news
July 23, 2008

In journalese, it’s called a “shield law,” because it would protect journalists from efforts to have them tossed in jail for upholding the ethics of their profession.

But the politicians have a better name for it. They call the bill the Free Flow of Information Act. That’s a name it deserves because the real beneficiaries, beyond the handful of reporters who might not go to jail because of it, are people who know things that the American people should know, and the people who need to know those things.

Forty-nine states and the District of Columbia have laws outlining the policy that reporters who publish information received from confidential sources generally cannot be compelled to disclose the identity of those sources. Exceptions include such cases as when the reporter was an actual witness to a crime, when disclosure was necessary to prevent a crime or when all other possible means of prosecuting a crime or arguing out a civil suit were exhausted.

The federal government, though, has no law or firm judicial ruling laying down such a necessary rule. All it has are Justice Department guidelines, which are drafted and carried out by the very agency most likely to start demanding that journalists reveal their sources.

The Free Flow of Information Act passed the House by a vote of 398-21 last October. It is now before the Senate, where it has been in one form or another for several years without a final vote. Sponsors hope to get one before Congress takes its August break. That’s what should happen.

As the title of the bill suggests, the point is not to be nice to journalists. The point is to encourage government officials and others in possession of information that would reveal wrongdoing or expose falsehoods to provide that information to journalists, get it out into the public domain and not fear that said journalist would wind up having to choose between breaking his vow of silence or being fined or imprisoned.

The bill is not a blank check for journalists, nor a total stone wall for prosecutors. Vows of confidentiality could be ordered aside by a judge, if convinced that the information was vital and that there was no other way of obtaining it.

That’s the way it works in the states. And that’s the way it would work if the bill supported by 42 state attorneys general, leaders of both parties and both presidential candidates, would finally become law.