The reporter's shield bill that passed in the House this week has once again raised the question of who qualifies for protection as a journalist and whether there should be protection for reporters working for media organizations owned by foreign governments - like the BBC. The bill, otherwise known as the Free Flow of Information Act of 2007, would uphold the right of reporters to protect the confidentiality of sources in most federal court cases. It defines a "covered person" as someone "engaged in journalism," which is defined as "the regular gathering, preparing, collecting, photographing, recording, writing, editing, reporting or publishing of news or information that concerns local, national, or international events or other matters of public interest for dissemination to the public." As veteran journalist Walter Pincus observed in his story for the Washington Post, this definition would cover those working for major news organizations as well as people who put out out their own blogs or newsletters. Like this blog, for instance.

Pincus notes, however, that the Senate Judiciary Committee caved in to opposition led by U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald who suggested in a Washington Post Op-Ed that the bill would protect groups that raise money for terrorist, Iraqi spies posing as journalists, or criminal gangs running radio stations. The Committee swallowed this preposterous fear mongering and decreed that the bill will not cover anyone who is "agent of a foreign power." Such persons are defined by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act as someone who "is reasonably expected to possess, control, transmit or receive foreign intelligence information while such person is in the United States." According to Pincus, Committee staff members said this could include reporters working for the news network al-Jazeera, owned by the government of Qatar; publications run by Hezbollah, the Lebanese political party; and other government owned news organizations like the BBC. Under this logic, U.S. prosecutors could use this loophole to target reporters who write stories about say, the abuses of the U.S. government. Let's hope the Senate stands up to the intelligence community and writes a bill with real teeth to protect all journalists.

Posted by ann at 09:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (12)

I worked as a journalist for twenty years and got out of the business back in 2006. One of the reasons I quit is that for the past several years, reporters have been squeezed hard by prosecutors to reveal their confidential sources. New York Times reporter Judith Miller spent 85 days in jail when she refused to identify her sources in the CIA leak case. Rhode Island TV reporter Jim Taricani spent four months under house arrest for defying a court order to identify who gave him an FBI tape showing a public official taking a bribe.

In my own hometown of San Francisco, two reporters at the San Francisco Chronicle, Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada, were threatened with up to 18 months in prison for refusing to give up their sources for federal grand jury testimony of professional athletes who admitted using illegal steroids. San Francisco blogger Josh Wolf, spent 226 days in jail for refusing to turn over video of a protest by anarchists.

After several years of standing by and letting the Bush Administration take aim at the press, The U.S. House of Representatives has finally stirred to life and overwhelmingly approved a media shield bill that would protect reporters from having to reveal their confidential sources in federal courts. The bill still has to pass the Senate, but it's a good enough reason to start blogging again.

The bill passed by a vote of 398 to 21 and was championed by my own Rep. Nancy Pelosi. The margin of the vote was big enough to override a threatened Bush veto. The bill does not exempt from federal or civil subpoena those who witnessed an alleged crime or permit the withholding of physical evidence.

Interesting, the bill protects those who break the law by giving documents or information to a reporter. This would impact situations like the Plame case where the act of passing on classified information about her identity as a CIA officer was deemed illegal. In the current wording of the bill, the government would have to prove "by the preponderance of the evidence" that disclosure of classified information, such as Plame's name, "has caused significant and articulable harm to the national security" and that "nondisclosure" of the source's identity "would be contrary to the public interest," balanced against the "public interest in gathering news and maintaining the free flow of information."

Write your senators and ask them to back this legislation.

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