Posted on 03/21/2014 11:23:04 AM PDT by Olog-hai
A supporter of a bill to protect reporters and the news media from having to reveal confidential sources said Friday the measure has the backing of the Obama administration and the support of enough senators to move ahead this year.
Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the No. 3 Democrat in the Senate, spoke optimistically about prospects for the measure, identifying five Republicans who would join with Democrats and independents on a bill that he said would address a constitutional oversight.
While the first amendment protects freedom of the press, “there is no first amendment right for gathering information,” Schumer said at The New York Times’ Sources and Secrets Conference on the press, government and national security. …
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
So would this law extend to wiretapping private citizens phones, bugging their vehicles, computers and homes? How far protecting them until it intrudes on Joe Citizen?
Most MSM sources work inside the White House and are named Mohammed.
I can understand why they need to be ‘shielded.’
In the middle east this is called Taqqiya.
There will be exemptions for Obama and crew. Those kinds of information gathering needs discouragement because they are already the most transparent administration in history. /s
Then I clicked on the link and read this section.
The bill's protections would apply to a "covered journalist," defined as an employee, independent contractor or agent of an entity that disseminates news or information. The individual would have to have been employed for one year within the last 20 or three months within the last five years.
It would apply to student journalists or someone with a considerable amount of freelance work in the last five years. A federal judge also would have the discretion to declare an individual a "covered journalist" who would be granted the privileges of the law...
While the definition covers traditional and online media, it draws the line at posts on Twitter, blogs or other social media websites by non-journalists.
It codifies protection for the mainstream media journalists (95% of whom are de facto agents of the Democratic Party) and specifically excludes online outlets who are not necessarily willing mouthpieces for the state.
Yup, just like Obamacare ought to be called the Unaffordable Care Act
I really hate the assumption that absent legislation to the contrary, the fedguv has power and jurisdiction over everything.
Yuppers, established media.
How many false flags can this rotten government crank out.
And yet without a greater Power being revered, that’s who is going to get the kudos.
The First Amendment does not apply only to "journalists."
The First Amendment does not give "journalists" the right to free speech, it gives The People the right to a free press.
Anyone can call themselves a "press" by publishing a pamplet of ideas and nailing it to the tree in the town square.
This law would be unconstitutional by trying to have the government define who can be the "free press" and who cannot.
-PJ
The approach is from the wrong direction, because it creates the appearance that right are dispensed, or not, from the government. It is doubly damned, because it effectively means that journalists have rights that ordinary citizens do not, and the definition of journalist is also to be dispensed by the government.
Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the “Pentagon Papers”, should have spent the next 20 years or so in a federal penitentiary. NOT because of the content of the papers, but because he broke the law in releasing classified information. He should have suffered the same consequences as if he sold them to a foreign government.
Likewise, journalist who published them, knowing full well they were classified documents, should have no free speech protections.
The FACT being abolished with this 'bill' - is that our First Amendment Protections are no longer a right - but rather a government-granted privilege.
This bears repeating:
The bill's protections would apply to a "covered journalist," defined as an employee, independent contractor or agent of an entity that disseminates news or information. The individual would have to have been employed for one year within the last 20 or three months within the last five years.
It would apply to student journalists or someone with a considerable amount of freelance work in the last five years. A federal judge also would have the discretion to declare an individual a "covered journalist" who would be granted the privileges of the law…
Again, the First Amendment is now going to be redefined into a privilege to be granted by a judge or bureaucrat.
While the definition covers traditional and online media, it draws the line at posts on Twitter, blogs or other social media websites by non-journalists.
So you and I no longer have First Amendment right of free speech, press or religious exercise. This 'Media Shield Law' eradicates the last enumerated right in the First Amendment and relegates it to a privilege.
The federal government has the express power to set up courts. (U.S. Constitution, Article I, section 8, cl. 9; Article III, section 1.) Those courts have the power to subpoena witnesses (explicitly, as to criminal cases, in the 6th Amendment; implicitly in civil cases, in Article III). This statute limits the power of federal courts to subpoena journalists. I do not believe it says anything about state courts.
Democrats are trying to shut down internet citizen journalists...
Republicans who go along with this are idiots.
SCOTUS has held repeatedly that there is no First Amendment right of a journalist to decline to respond to a subpoena. This bill is creating a new right.
“I knew this didn’t make any sense from the brief snippet I read here. How could Obama and Schumer be for something that I would, in theory, agree with?”
I had the same reaction, especially since the headline made it sound like he had trouble getting the votes on something that shouldn’t even require a law.
I figured that it had to be anti blogger law... and so it is.
I’m sure the establishment RINOs will be more than glad to vote for this.
Today, anyone can claim to be a journalist, take compromising videos, and put them on the internet.
Do you want to know who the real intended audience is for this bill? Think: James O'Keefe.
With this bill, the government could shut down O'Keefe from producing his Acorn-expose videos because they would label him a "blogger," and not a "covered journalist." They will hound him with subpoenas and contempt of court citations for exposing liberals and Democrats with his videos.
Without this bill, O'Keefe would have the same protections as a CBS 60 Minutes investigative journalist.
-PJ
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