Monday, October 15, 2007
Shield is for reporters, but the public gets the benefit
The U.S. Senate has already passed and the House of Representatives is scheduled to consider for passage this week an eminently reasonable law designed to allow reporters to serve the public without an undo fear of ending up in jail.
We are sure that there are those who will claim that a reporters’ shield law will hamstring federal prosecutors. Indeed, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald made just such a claim in a piece he wrote recently for the Washington Post.
Fitzgerald is actually something of a poster boy for passage of the law. It was he who demanded that a New York Times reporter, Judith Miller, be jailed for refusing to cooperate in his investigation of a leak of the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame. Miller ended up spending 85 days in a federal cell. No one else connected with the case did a day. The only person convicted of a crime by Fitzgerald was Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff. Libby’s jail sentence was commuted by President Bush.
It’s difficult to imagine the president lifting a finger to keep a reporter out of jail. The Bush Administration is certainly not alone in its belief that reporters should mind their own business, but it is has taken to new heights efforts to plug leaks and to accuse reporters of endangering national security when all they are really doing is informing the public.
But the idea that reporters aren’t supposed to tell the public anything that people in power want to keep secret is not new.
Historical view
Back when the nation was being founded there were those who wanted to silence the press. “If I had to choose between government without newspapers and newspapers with government, I wouldn’t hesitate to choose the latter,” a young Thomas Jefferson told the would-be censors. Admittedly, after he became president, Jefferson’s view of the dynamic between the press and government shifted toward the government.
That turn of events only strengthens the point that a free press is a necessary bulwark against an overwhelming government. Politicians — even great ones like Jefferson — come and go. But the power of the people should remain constant. And if the only information that people have is that which is spoon fed to them by politicians, then the people really have no power.
The First Amendment, which protects a free press, has served the nation well for centuries. In the last half of the 20th Century, courts provided a free press with considerable latitude, and the cases of reporters being jailed for refusal to expose their confidential sources were rare.
Legal protection
But the reporters who feel a need to protect their sources can no longer rely on the interpretations of individual judges to keep them out of jail and allow them to do their work. That’s where a shield law comes into play.
The Senate has approved the Free Flow of Information Act, which was introduced by Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the ranking minority member on the Judiciary Committee. The law has been carefully crafted so that legitimate issues of national security are protected. History shows that government officials who intimidate reporters by demanding their sources and threatening them are more often concerned about stories that were embarrassing or political damaging — not threats to national security.
The House, with the support of all members of our local delegation, should follow the Senate’s lead and pass the shield bill.
While any reporter prefers to write a story based on information provided by sources who go on the record, some stories can only be written based on information provided by sources who require or demand anonymity.
The public welfare is often served by those stories and the public welfare will be served by passage of a shield law that gives journalists an ability to report on some of the most important issues of the day without being dragged into court — or into jail.