What is being touted as a “media shield” bill is getting some blowback as the bill seeks to define a reporter. More importantly it seeks to define who is not a reporter or a member of the media. This would affect whether or not a person would have certain rights under the constitution as a member of the press.
New-media pioneer Matt Drudge called Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a “fascist” after she suggested only “real reporters” deserved protection under a new media-shield law.
“Comments from Sen. Feinstein yesterday on who’s a reporter were disgusting,” Drudge tweeted, adding that a “17-year old ‘blogger’ is as important as Wolf Blitzer.”
“Fascist!” he declared.
Drudge, the owner and operator of the most successful news site on the Internet, took to Twitter to defend bloggers and to hammer the senator.
An amendment is moving through the Senate Judiciary Committee that would essentially allow the government to determine who is a journalist for purposes of legal protection of sources. For purposes of protecting a source, a “journalist” under law would be anyone who:
- Works or worked for “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…news program; magazine or other periodical…or through television or radio broadcast…” These people would have to have the “primary intent to investigate events and procure material in order to disseminate to the public news or information.” Opinion journalists might not be covered.
- Bloggers and citizen journalists – citizens who commit acts of journalists without working for such an outlet – would not be covered, unless it was determined that “at the inception of the process of gathering the news or information sought, had the primary intent to investigate issues or events and procure material in order to disseminate to the public news or information.” In other words, the government – the Department of Justice – would now determine whether primary intent was news distribution or political concerns.
- Those explicitly excluded from protection include those “whose principal function, as demonstrated by the totality of such person or entity’s work, is to publish primary source documents that have been disclosed to such person or entity without authorization.” Glenn Greenwald, please contact your lawyer.
Who would decide who fell within these guidelines? A “judge of the United States” can “exercise discretion to avail the persons of the protections of this Act.” But in the first instance, the DOJ would have the discretion to determine whether a person is a “journalist” for purposes of the law. Instead of focusing on acts of journalism, the law would identify people by employment status.
But the new legal protections will not extend to the controversial online website Wikileaks and others whose principal work involves disclosing “primary-source documents … without authorization.”
Senate sponsors of the bill and a coalition of media groups that support it hailed Thursday’s bipartisan Senate Judiciary Committee vote as a breakthrough.