This week, the Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to take a look at what is formally called the Free Flow of Information Act.
It's more commonly known as a federal shield law for journalists, and it is imperative that it wins the support of this panel, so it can move to Congress, where it deserves full-fledged approval.
Even though California and 32 other states, plus the District of Columbia, have laws that protect journalists from revealing confidential sources, a federal shield law is necessary and not redundant.
After all, without a federal law, there is no protection for journalists subpoenaed to a federal court.
Our California Legislature obviously agrees. In August, both the Assembly and the state Senate unanimously passed a resolution, authored by Assemblymembers Noreen Evans, D-Vallejo, and Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, calling upon the United States Congress to enact a shield law for America's journalists.
"We just sent Washington a unified message to protect a free press," Evans said at the time. "Without a federal shield law enabling journalists to protect confidential news sources blowing the whistle for the public good, we cannot effectively govern ourselves and exercise the freedoms protected in our Bill of Rights. The shield bill now moving in Congress is a welcome cause for hope that the American way of life has a future in this country."
We couldn't agree more.
It is only through the promise of confidentiality that some news sources will reveal details about fraud, waste and abuse. And no one can deny that whistleblowers have played an important role in our country's history. Without such protection, stories such as the deplorable conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the Watergate debacle may never have seen ink.
Those stories were important enough to take down a president and instigate major changes.
We note that some opponents have complained that a shield law could lead to the release of trade secrets or personal, medical or financial information. We reject that notion, pointing out that there are already laws protecting such information.
Some say such a law would obstruct efforts by law enforcement officials to collect evidence and solve crimes. We vehemently disagree.
In arguing against a federal shield law, Justice Department spokesman Erik Ablin wrote: "In criminal cases, we only ask the press to reveal confidential source information via subpoena when needed to solve serious crimes, and when we cannot get the evidence elsewhere." He noted that such requests were "extremely rare" and said subpoenas for media sources were used in fewer than 20 cases in the past 15 years.
But what Mr. Ablin failed to mention is that the Justice Department has issued 65 subpoenas to journalists under the Bush administration.
John Sturm, president and CEO of the Newspaper Association of America, said reporters are "increasingly becoming the first stop, rather than the last resort" for prosecutors seeking information.
As we have said before, there is no good reason for anyone in Congress to oppose a reasonable shield law that ultimately is designed to allow journalists to perform their role as watchdogs and keep the American people informed about their government. |