A Stitch in Haste

I've blogged previously that I don't believe in "journalist shield laws" because the concept of "legal privilege" should only apply to privileged people, which journalists are not. Privilege is also supposed to protect the conveyor of privileged information, not the recipient; a journalist shield law turns this axiom upside-down.

But if you take as a given that there should be some kind of "journalist shield law," then it should actually apply to journalists as they are engaging in journalism.

So here is why the "blogger exception" to the proposed federal journalist shield law makes no sense whatsoever:

Bloggers who actually gather news would be protected under the proposed federal shield law, the legislation's first author, U.S. Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., told the Inland Press Association Monday.
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Pence said bloggers would likely have to be considered on a "blog-by-blog" basis.
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"Frankly, there are some that are out there gathering news," Spence said at Inland's 120th annual meeting. "There are many people though, who just link to your newspapers. It would be hard to argue to anyone that privilege applies to those people just because they have a Web site."

Huh? Remember what a journalist shield law is: a legal protection against being compelled to disclose the identity of confidential sources.

So how is someone who "just links to newspapers" affected by a shield law in the first place? If you're blogging about what your confidential sources tell you, then by definition you are not "just linking to newspapers," and if you are "just linking to newspapers," then by definition you have no confidential sources and have no need for a journalist shield law.

What Representative Pence and his Senate counterpart, Dick Lugar, cannot tiptoe around is the fatally flawed definition of a "covered person" in their proposed "Free Flow of Information Act" (H.R. 581, S. 340):

[A]n employee, contractor, or other person who gathers, edits, photographs, records, prepares, or disseminates news or information for such [an entity that disseminates information by print, broadcast, cable, satellite, mechanical, photographic, electronic, or other means].

In other words, under the Pence-Lugar bill, a journalist is not someone who "does journalism" but merely someone employed by the mainstream media.

If there is going to be a "shield law," then it must be a journalism shield law rather than a journalist shield law. If the hack politicians really care about the "free flow of information," then fine — protect the flow and not the logjam.

Journalist is as journalist does...

More thoughts from Jonah Goldberg.

(Cross-posted at PoliBlog.)