Shielding Whom? Bloggers Left Out of Federal Bill

The Free Flow of Information Act approved by the House of Representatives this past week is sparking a new debate over who is truly considered a journalist. The legislation, commonly known as the federal shield law, was first introduced in May by Representative Rick Boucher (D-Virginia). It relates to an essential tool used by seasoned broadcast and print reporters--anonymity. Journalists working on stories requiring sensitive, privileged or classified information will often grant anonymity to sources who supply details that cannot be obtained anywhere else. To the public, this is obvious when an article or broadcast piece includes attributions such as “government officials say” or “sources close to the investigations have revealed.”

Things get complicated when these anonymous sources are involved in illegal activities themselves. Authorities often try to compel journalists to reveal their sources, possibly exposing these contacts to civil and criminal prosecution. Reporters who refuse have been declared in contempt of court and sentenced to jail time. Most famously, New York Times reporter Judith Miller (left) spent eighty-five days in jail in 2005 after she refused to identify the White House official who leaked the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame. This federal shield law would “shield” reporters from penalties in most instances and protect their ability to use confidential sources. However, granting these new protections requires the government define who exactly qualifies as a journalist. Media critic Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times argues that this is a slippery slope, “The whole notion of letting the government define a journalist is abhorrent to anyone who values the 1st Amendment.” He notes a Senate committee approved a measure to vaguely define journalists as anyone actively “engaged in journalism.” Meanwhile, the House version goes with a more confining definition: "A person who regularly gathers, prepares, collects, photographs, records, writes, edits, reports or publishes news or information that concerns local, national, or international events or other matters of public interest for dissemination to the public for a substantial portion of the person's livelihood or for substantial financial gain."

Rutten objects to this classification because it essentially applies only to full-time reporters working at established outlets. Bloggers and part-time “citizen journalists” would effectively be left out in the cold. While Rutten may be correct that bloggers do have a valuable role in online discourse, the conclusions of his column are slightly alarmist. The technicalities within the bill are not designed to limit free speech. All citizens retain the right to speak, blog, or broadcast freely. Rather, these new definitions limit the scope of federal protections to true professionals with a need to deal with sensitive or illegal material. Leaving the definition too broad would allow anyone having contact with individuals involved in illegal activities to claim citizen journalist protection, regardless of them ever having published works in the “public interest” or not.

While there are indeed citizen journalists involved in professional, groundbreaking and honest work, Rutten’s call to protect them would also give protection to the unprofessionals, who are rightly accused on occasion of producing cliché and sometimes misleading work. Former Silicon Valley entrepreneur Andrew Keen argues in a new book (right) that so-called “Web 2.0” technologies like interactive blogs and YouTube have led to a “cult of the amateur” that only succeeds in producing unpolished, irrelevant and uninformed commentary. While Keen's argument overlooks the groundbreaking work taking place online today, he does fairly point out that some new technologies fail to honor true expertise or wisdom. For example, sites like Wikipedia are editable by anyone--regardless of their education or experience. Meanwhile, Keen warns that changing market pressures could bring an end to the trained, full time journalist. The public would instead turn to bloggers, who Keen says are less meticulous with facts and lack the journalistic resources of large newspapers or television networks. However these bloggers, who rely on mainstream press to inspire much of their commentary, would not survive in a vacuum. In a speech earlier this fall, PBS anchor Jim Lehrer told a university audience that there will always be a role for objective, conventional journalists. Without them, he said, search engines and blogs would not have any real news content to deliver. The professional journalists are the ones feeding the news and commentary cycle at the most basic level. Lehrer shares Keen's distrust of the bloggers who attempt deliver the news, but does not agree with the author's doomsday predictions. Nevertheless, the positions taken by these two men do raise strong counterpoints to Rutten’s argument (one that groups Pulitzer Prize winning correspondents with conspiracy theorists). Professional journalists will still have jobs for the foreseeable future, but deserve some distinction from the self-appointed pundits online. While everyone is entitled to protection under the First Amendment, this federal shield law should be reserved for those seasoned professionals dealing with situations truly requiring anonymous sources.