Shielding the Rights Of a Free Press

Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee will consider passing The Free Flow of Information Act, which would protect the right of journalists — including student journalists and bloggers — to conceal confidential sources from the government. We endorse the bill and hope that the Senate will recognize its value in securing a journalist’s right to responsibly disseminate information.

The current bill would give federal judges the power to quash subpoenas served to reporters forcing them to reveal confidential sources. The ability to assure anonymity is critical to a journalist, as sources speaking under the condition of anonymity sometimes provide some of the most important ledes to a story. A journalist’s promise, however, holds little weight if the federal government has the power to override it.

Earlier versions of the shield law defined those protected by the bill as journalists working for pay. We are pleased that the current iteration of the bill has been revised to protect student journalists and bloggers who play an equally important role in the field of journalism. Frank LoMonte, executive director at the Student Press Law Center — an advocacy group for student free-press rights — acknowledges that student journalists often have more at stake than professionals who are backed by large-scale media outlets.

“Students especially need something like this because they are so vulnerable,” he said. “Unlike someone at The New York Times, which has a huge legal department, student journalists don’t have those kind of resources.”

This recent version of the proposed bill would protect undergraduate students, like the journalists at Northwestern University whose efforts to exonerate wrongfully accused inmates have been stalled by a demand from local prosecution to hand over information gathered from their investigations. We appreciate the realization that students, too, play an important role in the news gathering business.

In recent months, the bill has been met with opposition from officials who fear that the freedoms afforded by the shield law would undermine the government’s power to intervene when information puts the country at risk. We recognize that this law would not give journalists unwavering freedom.

Instead, it would heighten a journalist’s responsibility to use discretion when publishing sensitive information. National security remains the crux of this issue. It would be irresponsible for a journalist to publicize information that would put our nation’s security at risk, such as by releasing plans to deploy troops at war, and we do not condone journalistic abuse of the use of anonymous sourcing.

But the discretionary power to decide what is and is not fit to print, should be in the hands of the press. Most fundamentally, the rights of a free press are rooted in the Constitution and a federal shield law would prevent the government from imposing restrictions on this freedom.

James Madison said it best when he wrote, “However desirable those measures might be which might correct without enslaving the press, they have never yet been devised in America.”