A federal shield law is necessary to ensure the survival of investigative journalism.

Last Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed the Free Flow of Information Act. The bill will go before the full Senate sometime later this Month. The bill provides protection for “reporter privilege” — which, legally speaking, will protect journalists against the government requiring them to reveal confidential sources or the information those sources provide  (http://www.spj.org/shieldlaw-faq.asp). In recent months, the idea of “reporter privilege” has come to the forefront as a result of the Associated Press’ phones being tapped by the federal government and Fox News’ James Rosen being served a warrant concerning a confidential source which disclosed that North Korea was going to test a nuclear bomb.

I believe that there will be great advantages to enacting the proposed shield law, as well as some challenges. The bill has a broad definition of who qualifies as a journalist. According to the bill, a journalist is some with an “employment relationship” for one year within the past 20 years, or three months within the past five years, and someone with a “substantial track record” of freelancing in the past five years (http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-09-12/world/41994597_1_media-shield-law-press-freedom-confidential-sources). This definition gives many people protection including possibly former reporters and unethical journalists.  

However, the bill does have limits in that it would not protect journalists in, “classified leak cases when information would prevent or mitigate an act of terrorism or harm to national security.” (http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-09-12/world/41994597_1_media-shield-law-press-freedom-confidential-sources). I believe that while that limitation is politically necessary and in our security interests the broad “harm to national security” clause could be tested very quickly by cases involving leakers (such as “Scooter” Libby)( http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ex-vp-dick-cheney-outraged-president-bush-didn-grant-scooter-libby-full-pardon-article-1.370889) as well as potential whistleblowers. While there are a number of imperfections, the bill is a great first step to ensure some measure of journalistic freedom for years to come. As Senator Chuck Schumer said, “This legislation ensures that tough investigative journalism that holds government accountable will be able to thrive.”

One element of the bill that I am personally excited with is the protection for college journalists. College journalists have not received much protection as journalists, but this bill provides them greater protection than they currently have at the moment (http://www.splc.org/news/newsflash.asp?id=2607). This law would allow student journalists a greater opportunity to do hard investigative journalism of their institutions to ensure they are acting lawfully and in the best interests of their stakeholders (student, faculty and other staff). I hope this leads to more investigative journalism at public and private institutions.

I pray that legislators can move past the partisan gridlock and actually pass this bill. If passed, it would be a great victory for all political points of view as it will protect free speech and a free press by allowing more parties to be heard and protected.