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Federal Journalist Shield Law Advances
Posted by
kdawson
on Wed Aug 08, 2007 07:09 AM
from the little-bird-told-me dept.
from the little-bird-told-me dept.
A journal entry by twitter alerts us that the US Free Flow of Information Act cleared the House Judiciary Committee last week. It is designed as a shield for the confidential sources of journalists, and the bill's sponsors intend that the definition of "journalist" be broad enough to encompass at least some bloggers. The language voted out of the Judiciary Committee stipulates that protections apply only to those who derive "financial gain or livelihood from the journalistic activity" — this could cover anybody with a blog and an AdWords account, and this worries some opponents. The Register's coverage notes "several exceptions regarding terrorism, national security, imminent death and trade secret leaks." If this act becomes law, it would override all state shield laws, some of which may now provide stronger protections. The bill seems unlikely to go anywhere any time soon as its counterpart in the Senate has received no attention, and in its present form it would likely be opposed by the Bush administration.
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I don't get the rationale (Score:4, Insightful)
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Well, under our laws they do. If you have material knowledge of a crime, the government can force you to divulge it (unless by doing so you would incriminate yourself). This is making a narrow exception for the press.
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Rights vs Privileges vs Real World Exceptions (Score:2)
In fact, the government doesn't have any rights. People have rights which we create governments to protect. In the real world in which I live, sometimes those rights conflict with each other. We have to look at the real effects of the tradeoffs between the limits on protecting and exercising some of these rights. The Constitution is not a suicide pact [wikipedia.org].
While th
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-- Alberto Gonzales, US Attorney General
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Soakin' up those mod points! (Score:2)
I respond to a guy posting an obvious dig at the Democrats...he basically insinuated that they had a plan to abuse this law which was why they 'let it pass' despite their thin majority.
So I do what any good slashdotter would do, give them the snarky over-the-top reply they were trolling for!
Oh well, you win some you lose some.
Override? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Actually, the Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 [potsdam.edu] set the minimum age to purchase alcohol and possess it in public to be 21. It did not require states to ban alcohol consumption by persons under the age of 21.
Federal law often overrides state law by forcing sta
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It is not compelling states to follow Federal Law through funding withholding. States are constitutionally bound to adhere to federal law. It is part
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Boy, you got the Reserved Power Clause [wikipedia.org] exactly backwards: it states that if a power is not specifically given to the Feds, then it falls to the states which is, of course, subsequent to the Implied Powers Clause [wikipedia.org] which basically says that citizens should not be deemed to forfeit rights not specifically enumerated.
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Where in the (current) constitution does it give the Federal Government power to regulate drinking age laws? It was added in at one time but then revoked.
Congress has the right to control interstate commerce and funding for said projects, but it has no a
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Article 1 Section 8: The Congress shall have power
to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;
To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures;
To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States;
To establish post offices and post roads;
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court;
To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations;
To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;
To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;
To provide and maintain a navy;
To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;
To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States, and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings;--And
To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.
You can make laws to expand on those powers, but if it is not listed then you have to make an amendment to the constitution. Those include making states respect the rights of all citizens right to vote and trial by jury regardless of race, voting at 18, and at one time to outlaw alcohol which was later repealed.
If you could find me a part of the constitution and amendments that grants the federal government the right to
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I will note, however that in most cases where the federal government extorts the states the feds are trying to enforce stricter standards, not lower standards.
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Does Can-Spam ring a bell? How about a national Do Not Call list?
There are many federal laws on the books which override stronger state laws.
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Reading the bill, it appears to apply to federal issues, not state issues.[1] So in this case, federal laws "override" which it involves federal issues. If this were a matter of field preemption, then Congress can do whatever it wants. Get sued in state court, Herr Blogger, and this bill seems to offer no support. You'll need the state law.
[1]: "In any proceeding or in connection with any issue arising under
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It's the doctrine of Federal preemption, and it's been around for a while. Here's [umkc.edu] a good explanation.
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Supremacy Clause + 14th Amendment = Yes, override. (Score:2)
Thats daangerous territory (Score:5, Insightful)
Ploy (Score:2)
Laws like this never go anywhere unless they already have blueprints for a back door.
I must have midded someting.... (Score:5, Insightful)
*Except regarding terrorism, national security**, imminent death and trade secret leaks.
**"National security" never means the safety of the people living in a nation. If it did, perusing national security would mean working for a sustainable economy, a non-agressive (defensive only) military policy, or perhaps health care and highway safety. "National security" must actually mean something like, "actions taken to further enrich the military industrial complex" or "the right to invade other nations to control their resources".
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Basically what it says is "you may keep your sources secret, unless it matters".
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If someone tells me that they are going to kill another person and then goes and kills that person, why should the fact that I am a journalist make a difference in whether or not the courts/police can compel me to tell them who it is? What if the person who told me, also told me they were going to kill someone else?
I think the difference in your example is that you would have knowledge of a specific crime being committed. In most cases, it's not a crime (yet) to leak information about the government. If a journalist was told by an anonymous source that some politician murdered someone (in the usual legal definition of the word, not the he-started-a-war definition), it wouldn't be that unreasonable for a court to compel testimony from the journalist about what they know.
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Not saying I agree, but to just paste the 1st amendment and say 'wtf?' is the height of naivety.
Wall Street Journal (Score:2, Insightful)
Now, I realize that they're aiming at, let's say, a newspaper owned by the Chinese Government, but I have this sinking feeling that it will be applied to some paper like the "Wall Street Journal" since it is now controlled by an Australian. I just see some Attorney
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Parent
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Did he renounce his Australian Citizenship?
What about the Financial Times? What if they break a story that the Government doesn't like? Or what about the zillions of websites and other papers, magazines, and whatnot that are owned by a foreign businesses.
OK, I was ignorant about the citizenship of Murdoch, but still doesn't invalidate my point. You need to look at the big picture.
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This is a Good Thing (tm) (Score:2)
Trade Secret leaks? (Score:3, Funny)
Protect the Publishers (Score:3, Interesting)
This principle of protecting the publisher without any preference among them is essential to the open source movement. The 60-70 year old Baby Boomers running our government have finally started to catch up with current American culture and wisdom. But they need to drop the obsolete old boy protections for "journalists" with whom they have all kinds of "off the record" deals to protect their own secrets from informing the public, including the bribes that corporate mass media pay to keep both their sides of the secrecy rules in business.
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Basically that's it. Journalists are treated as a privileged class in our society. I had a rant recently [slashdot.org] about how the media has taken up the baton of the second estate from an outdated clergy. They've become a secula
'Financial gain'? (Score:2, Interesting)
I call BS on this regulation. Maybe journalists ought to be defined by a certification course on journalistic ethics similar to CITI [citiprogram.org] for researchers?
Cheers!
the other view (Score:2, Interesting)
Only 15% of americans truly trust the news providers [cbsnews.com], and since just about any story you find in the paper or hear on tv requires us trusting the reporter, and their anonymous sources, it doesn't make sense
Anonymous Cowards (Score:3, Insightful)
I think journalists often use anonymity irresponsibly. It's not just used for whistleblowers exposing shady dealings and national conspiracies. It's also used to hide legitimate conflicts of interest from public view. In the run-up to the Iraq war,
Does anyone remember that time when a source on the Iraq war, who demanded that he only be referred to as a "senior administration official", came across as a bit of a Dick [salon.com]?
Anonymity shouldn't be used for trivial reasons [salon.com], and it shouldn't be used to give those in power a soapbox for publishing self-serving disinformation. Hint: if you're interviewing an administration official who thinks the president is about to rush us into a disastrous war, anonymity might be right for you. If you're interviewing an official who wants to use anonymity to make his pro-war opinions sound like they're coming from a more legitimate and objective source than, well, him... the American people deserve to know how credible the source is.
The law itself is probably a good idea, but journalists have lately been willing to grant anonymity to clearly undeserving sources.
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There was an argument over including a "Bill of Rights" in our Constitution over the same principle. If you enumerate only certain rights, you run the risk that it inherently denies others. I haven't read this bill, but by stipulating who is allowed protection you reduce the rights of others. That goes against the very principles our country was designe
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Thus was there a ninth amendment -- I doubt this bill would run afoul it though, since it isn't really proscriptive of selective regulation, it serves only to pre-empt the validity of the assumption you mentioned. The Ninth amendment is sometimes used to support the implicit notion of privacy in the constitution, su
Legitimacy... (Score:3, Insightful)
in comparison..... (Score:2)
Or in other words does this undermine free speech, as in beer....?