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Oct
16
Again, another “can’t say it better” entry on why the federal shield law deserves to be vetoed (even if not for the reasons Bush thinks he should veto it). This time, from Josh Wolf, who was jailed for several months after he refused to turn over a video he’d been taking, as a blogger, of a demonstration where violence broke out.
It seems to me that in the process of codifying these protections, the law is almost a tacit endorsement for the use of of journalists as an investigative arm of the government and defines journalism, not as an act, but as an occupation. In doing so, the law doesn’t serve to protect the public’s right to know but instead it protects the journalists right to conduct business.
At the SPJ conference earlier this month, I heard people speak of how this limited law would be better than nothing — as if we can somehow pass a stronger law later on. The success of this law has only been made possible through those journalists that have gone to jail to assert this right. A stronger law would only surface if another blogger goes to jail to protect his or her right to information that isn’t patently confidential and we don’t need to fight that battle again.
While I do feel that there is an urgent need for a Federal Shield Law, I’m fearful that if this law goes through that our press freedoms will actually be worse off than they are right now. My case seemed to rely on a sliver of light peering out of the door of a concurring opinion in the 1972 Supreme Court case Branzburg v. Hayes, along with a few other cases, and a wing and a prayer. It wasn’t a lot to go on, but at least it wasn’t excepted from an existing shield law. I’m deeply afraid that my case and others that will follow would be worse off if the most narrowly tailored and limited combination of the two bills become law.
For these reasons, I simply can’t offer my support of the Free Flow of Information Act of 2007. We do need a Federal Shield Law, more than ever, but we need good laws not watered -down legislation that provides very limited protections to a narrow category of journalists. [emphasis mine]
Josh is exactly right about how many bloggers will need to be sacrificial lambs before anyone pushes to adequately improve the federal shield law.
Shameful.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 10:37 pm October 16th, 2007 in Blogging, Civil Rights, Media, Writing
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You might want to see what this person says about the shield law:
http://www.congoo.com/user/FullComment?comid=190&Category_ID=-1&Channel_ID=64&Channel=Politics/Law
I do not agree with the law and I hope Bush does Veto it.
Joseph – thanks for that link.
Here’s what stands out for me from that link and what I wrote on the Wide Open blog when someone asked me whether I really was supporting the leaking of classified info (of course I don’t):
“If information is classified, it shouldn’t be leaked. If the information is not so important where out national security or other important functions of government aren’t harmed should it be made public, then it shouldn’t be classified in the first place. The politicians can fix this themselves by changing what they do and do not keep classified.”
That’s pretty much what I wrote on WO – that the Commander in Chief et al get to pick the people who work with the classified info. If they are picking people who will leak, how is that everyone else’s problem too? I mean, of course it is everyone’s problem when there is a leak – we shouldn’t have them.
But so what if the onus is placed back on the employers? Why shouldn’t that be where it is, rather than on the recipient of the leaked info?