Senator Schumer More Or Less Admits His 'Media Shield' Law Won't Protect Actual Journalists

Journalism

from the a-total-failure dept

There had been a time when we thought that a “media shield” law was a good idea. Such a law would make it explicit that journalists don’t have to give up their sources. However, over the many, many years of the debate concerning such a law, we noticed a troubling pattern, in that politicians kept wanting to narrowly limit who was a “journalist,” often saying amateur journalists don’t count. Senator Lindsey Graham even explicitly stated that he wasn’t sure if bloggers deserved First Amendment protections. A completely out of touch Senator Dianne Feinstein insisted that “real journalists” draw salaries from big media companies. When Wikileaks first became a big deal, those working on the legislation actually worked hard to make sure that Wikileaks would not be covered.

There are all sorts of problems with all of that, starting with the most obvious: when the government gets to define who is and who is not a “journalist,” you’re raising serious First Amendment questions about how Congress can make no law interfering with a free press. By defining who is and who is not a journalist, it would appear that Congress is violating that basic concept.

Driving home this point last week, the main author of the Senate’s shield law, Senator Chuck Schumer, himself has admitted that he’s not sure if his own law would protect Glenn Greenwald:

Schumer discussed the bill’s provisions and how, if it became law, it might affect journalist Glenn Greenwald, who reported on National Security Agency’s secret surveillance based on documents leaked by Edward Snowden.

“It’s probably not enough protections to (cover) him, but it’s better than current law,” Schumer said.

And that demonstrates how the law actually may be worse than current law. If it’s carving out exceptions for the people doing real investigative reporting, breaking big stories that are having a very serious global impact on a variety of issues, then it’s making the situation worse, not better.

Any law that attempts to define “journalist” is going to be a massive problem and likely unconstitutional. There is some view that we already have a journalism shield law in the First Amendment itself. Alternatively, if the government really wants to make an explicit safe harbor to protect journalist sources, it seems that a better approach would be to not define “journalists,” but just make it clear that it protects anyone “engaged in journalism,” whether professional or not. The whole reason why the Senate is so fearful of having the law too broad is that they’re worried that, say, someone engaged in criminal activity will be able to get immunity from revealing accomplices by claiming to be a journalist. But, instead you could just look at whether the activities they were engaged in was gathering information for the sake of disclosing it, and see that it was a form of journalism. But, instead, it looks like Congress wants to push forward with a bad law that is almost certainly unconstitutional.

Filed Under: chuck schumer, glenn greenwald, journalism, journalists, shield law