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