Shield law lets press do its job

By A TIMES EDITORIAL
Published September 3, 2007

A small victory for press freedom occurred before Congress went on its summer break when a bill to create a federal shield law passed the House Judiciary Committee on a voice vote. The bill still has a long way to go, but this bit of momentum is promising. Maybe before the 110th Congress ends it will finally give journalists the protections they need to do the job of holding government accountable.

The big, important stories of illegal or unethical conduct by public officials and corporate executives often don't get reported without someone from the inside willing to come forward. Because whistle-blowers tend to get fired, ostracized or worse, it typically takes a promise of confidentiality before they are willing to disclose what they know.

This is the lifeblood of investigative journalism. Without the ability to promise confidentiality, stories such as the mistreatment of our wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the inside of the Enron scandal and warrantless eavesdropping by government would not have come to light when they did.

The bipartisan Free Flow of Information Act, H.R. 2102, would bring federal law into line with that of 32 other states and the District of Columbia in granting journalists a qualified privilege to protect the confidentiality of sources. This legal protection is desperately needed. Over the last few years there have been more than 30 cases of reporters being subpoenaed or questioned about their confidential sources in federal cases. Journalists have been threatened with jail or locked behind bars when they refused to cooperate. Such high-profile showdowns infringe on press freedom and chill the prospect of future sources coming forward.

The bill would tell prosecutors and private lawyers to look somewhere other than their local news outlets for the collection of evidence. Reporters are not law enforcement and shouldn't be used as a convenient extra pair of investigative hands.

In cases of national security and other exigent circumstances, the legislation provides narrow exceptions where journalists can be compelled to turn over information or testify. But the general rule would be for federal courts to leave the press alone to do its job. The party seeking the evidence would have to show that the public interest is better served by disclosure than by respecting the press' news-gathering function.

The committee did a little tinkering with the language of who qualifies as a reporter, limiting it to someone who practices journalism for financial gain or as a livelihood. That may leave certain bloggers out. But this legislation offers a sound framework and deserves the support of Florida's congressional delegation.

[Last modified September 2, 2007, 20:42:33]