All thanks goes to one of my Reader EEVIE.. for the shared information… Thank you
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I call this law ANTI BLOGGING LAW in all it’s means to Shield ( Expose ) Bloggers and Alternate media and prosecute em..Don’t forget SOPA which they tried to pass in , but ultimately failed.. Same FATE for this one too…
What would happen if a bunch of uber rich paranoid powerful people got control of American Constitutional Democracy? Senator Dianne Feinstein i call her ( frankenstein ) one of the most crooked & corrupt Senators to sit in the Senate chamber…this also proves how scared they have become, as Main Stream (Lame ) stream media is loosing control and forcing Corrupt Journalist of Air:-) Big Time… Also this shows that you’re only covered if you sell the product of your journalism for corporate profit, right?
As one Group put this as ..A proposed “shield law” for journalists is intended to protect them from government pressure and intervention. But what it really does is allow the government to define who gets to be a journalist and who doesn’t. And that’s dangerous.
A group of senators have put forward a so-called “shield law” that would define who is considered a journalist under U.S. law, and protect them from having to reveal their confidential sources or submit to other government or legal requests. This might sound like a great idea — except that it requires Congress to decide who is a journalist and who isn’t, and that’s not a good idea at all. As more than one critic of the bill has pointed out, we already have a pretty effective journalist shield law: it’s called the First Amendment to the Constitution. .
Galactic Human ( GH )
By: Kevin Gosztola Thursday September 12, 2013 4:04 pm
The Senate Judiciary Committee passed legislation that would establish a federal shield law for reporters or journalists in the United States. The legislation was amended, before passing out of committee, to define who would be a “covered journalist” under the proposed shield legislation.
The proposed shield legislation, the Free of Flow of Information Act of 2013, was introduced by Sen. Chuck Schumer as news of the Justice Department seizing an overly broad set of the Associated Press’ phone records for a leak investigation and of an FBI agent labeling Fox News reporter James Rosen an “aider, abettor and co-conspirator” in a leak investigation were making headlines. However, there is nothing immediately obvious in the proposed media shield that would protect the press from an agency in government committing those kind of abuses. It would not protect someone like New York Times reporter James Risen, who the administration of President Barack Obama has tried to force to testify against his source in a leak case despite protest from media organizations.
Schumer said during the Judiciary Committee meeting that it would provide a shield for reporters “against unwarranted intrusion” (a reporters’ privilege) but would be “flexible to account for the legitimate needs of law enforcement, private litigants and national security.” He added, “It’s Kevlar, not Kryptonite.”
“Prosecutors will lose sight of the need to preserve the free flow of information and in their understandable zeal to prosecute leakers who would seek to do harm to our country in one way or another,” Schumer said. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Sen. Lindsey Graham and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, “would preserve that ability but with real protections and notice for journalists in all but the most extreme cases.”
The proposed shield legislation would make newly revised Justice Department guidelines the “law of the land,” according to Schumer. This means the Justice Department would not be authorized to delay notifying a reporter when their records were sought after 90 days.
When government sought records, not just records of third-party communications, the reporter or media organization would have to be notified. It would “harmonize” with the Electronic Communications Privacy Act to protect reporters (although that may not be too reassuring to members of the press since that legislation passed in 1986 is sorely in need of being updated and overhauled).
An amendment from Senator Dianne Feinstein and Senator Dick Durbin passed in committee. As Feinstein said when presenting the amendment, “I’ve had long-standing concerns that the language in the bill as introduced would grant a special privilege to people who really aren’t reporters at all, who have no professional qualifications whatsoever.”
“The fundamental issue behind this amendment is, should this privilege apply to anyone, to a seventeen year-old who drops out of high school, buys a website for five dollars and starts a blog? Or should it apply to journalists, to reporters, who have bona fide credentials?” Feinstein asked.
“This bill is described as a reporter shield law. So, I believe it should be applied to real reporters. The attorney-client privilege applies to attorneys, not any non-legal advisor. The spousal privilege applies to spouses, not to boyfriends and girlfriends. As I described the last time this committee passed this legislation, this could have been interpreted to cover hate websites. like that of the neo-Nazi organization, the National Socialist Movement or even Senate press secretaries,” Feinstein suggested.
Feinstein said the amendment sets up “a test for establishing bona fide credentials that make one a legitimate journalist.”
A “covered journalist,” under the amendment, would be the following:
…an employee, independent contractor, or agent of an entity or service that disseminates news or information by means of newspaper; nonfiction book; wire service; news agency; news website, mobile application or other news or information service (whether distributed digitally or other wise); news program; magazine or other periodical, whether in print, electronic, or other format; or through television or radio broadcast, multichannel video programming distributor (as such term is defined in section 602(13) of the Communications Act of 1934 (47 U.S.C. 522(13)), or motion picture for public showing…
That person must also have the “primary intent to investigate events and procure material in order to disseminate to the public news or information concerning local, national, or international events or other matters of public interest.” Or, that person should be engaged in the “regular gathering, preparation, collection, photographing, recording, writing, editing, reporting or publishing on such matters.”
A person would also qualify as a “covered journalist” if they had experience in journalism and had “substantially contributed, as an author, editor, photographer, or producer, to a significant number of articles, stories, programs, or publications” in the past twenty years. As Feinstein said, it would “cover a legitimate journalist such as a Dan Rather who leaves his media entity and takes to publishing freelance stories on the web.” [Note: Rather didn't "leave"; he was fired for reporting a story on President George W. Bush.]
Feinstein highlighted a “safety valve” in the proposed shield legislation that would authorize a “federal judge to apply the privilege to a person who doesn’t fall within the parameters of one of the previous definitions if the judge determines based on specific facts contained in the record that doing so would be in the interests of justice and necessary to protect lawful and legitimate news gathering activities under the specific circumstances of the case.”
“I believe the language ‘legitimate news gathering activities’ is the key and would exclude hate websites and other persons who are not actually engaged in the pursuit of journalism,” Feinstein stated.
There were amendments offered by Senator John Cornyn and Senator Jeff Sessions that failed. Both Cornyn and Sessions argued the proposed shield legislation would create risks to national security by exempting reporters from law enforcement investigations or protecting leakers. The legislation does not do that at all, and, in fact, contains a section that broadly seeks to protect so-called national security interests of the United States.
ADDITIONAL ANALYSIS
First, let’s not get away from what the value of a media shield law would be and why it is needed.
According to the Society for Professional Journalists (SPJ), “Government officials have attempted to jail and even bankrupt journalists to force them to reveal their sources or information they have gathered. A study conducted by Brigham Young University law professor RonNell Andersen Jones, for example, found that in 2006 alone journalists were served with more than 7,200 subpoenas from state and local governments, and about 800 from the federal government. Some news organizations are served more than 25 times a year, and most newsroom leaders perceived a continual increase in government action to compel journalists to talk. In 2006, for example, blogger Josh Wolf of California was jailed for 226 days because he wouldn’t hand over video he shot while covering a protest.”
More than forty states have some kind of a shield law that provides some level of protection for reporters, but there is no federal shield law.
The proposed shield law as passed would provide some protections against journalists being forced to reveal their sources. However, the Feinstein-Durbin amendment passed is very problematic specifically because a shield law should cover the act of journalism, not journalists.
While Cornyn is opposed to the idea of a shield law, he made a reasonable statement during the committee meeting on the legislation:”Any carve out of particular media for protection and special treatment is in effect government licensing of legitimate media.”
Cornyn actually proposed an amendment that would have undone the Feinstein-Durbin amendment by making the “covered persons” anyone who would be covered under the clause of the Constitution that grants citizens a right to freedom of the press.
Sen. Mike Lee opposed the proposed shield legislation and said, “Because this legislation may have the effect of excluding certain persons from enjoying the added First Amendment protections the bill would provide, I cannot support it.”
It would not protect “citizen bloggers,” because, as Durbin argued, “If you open the door to anyone who blogs, you have opened the door in terms of national security and safety far wider than I think it should be.”
Feinstein made it clear she could not support a bill “if anybody who sits down and goes out on a blog is suddenly a journalist.” She said, “Otherwise, it’s open sesame. Anybody can say anything with no background, no integrity. If a Snowden were to sit down and write this stuff, he’d have a privilege and I’m not gonna go there.”—which is not true at all.
Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden or anyone like him would not be protected. He would be publishing classified information without authorization and, as a government contractor, would be subject to the same charges and prosecution that led him to flee the United States in the first place.
As a media coalition wrote to Judiciary Committee Chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy, in support of the proposed shield legislation:
The bill would circumscribe this privilege in those limited cases where a journalist has confidential information that would prevent an act of terrorism or other future significant harm to national security, an exception whose limited nature needs to be underscored in the legislative history. The bill does not create new procedures in federal court. The Act would simply provide judges with clear standards for reviewing a motion to quash a subpoena or other compulsory process, which is a common procedure within the judicial system.
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