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Ruling to Make Reporters Act Like Drug Dealers?
netbuzz writes "A 2-1 New York appeals court ruling yesterday will require two reporters to cough up their telephone records over a property-seizure case unless it gets reversed on appeal. As the dissenting judge noted, this kind of erosion of press protections will have reporters 'contacting sources the way I understand drug dealers do to reach theirs -- by use of clandestine cell phones and meeting in darkened doorways.' It's long past time for a federal shield law."
Who gets shielded and who doesn't? Is a New York Times reporter automatically better than a blogger? What about a press flack? The 1st Amendment is for *everybody*, not just reporters. The idea of creating supercitizens with special rights doesn't sit well with me. If your problem is with the way the government can invade our privacy, propose new rules for government behavior that don't trample on the ideal of equality before the law.
If you really think that, what methods do you use to get information about the world?
The press can suck, no doubt, but they're the best check on government we have in this country. Every law that hinders their ability to do their jobs, is a law that favors closed, tyrannical, government.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
He said it already -- he knows the news is fiction because a fictional movie said so.
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And this is exactly what they were thinking of when they wrote the First Amendment to the Constitution:
So what I want to know is this: what part of "no law" did the legislatures not understand?
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You are kidding right? This ruling just makes it harder for the real reporters, who do call up sources, to do their jobs.
The lazy-ass reporters who already do nothing but re-write press releases won't change a thing in how they do business.
The problem with freedom, is that there are always going to be people who use it in ways you don't approve of.
There are two ways to deal with this:
1) Remove the freedom
2) Understand that freedom doesn't just apply to things you approve of.
Now, option 1 is real popular these days, but I myself prefer option 2, especially when it comes to rights touched on in the First Amendment.
I hear people sneering about the First all the damn time. The "Hippie" amendment right? Right to pornography? Right for those press jackals to pry into your life?
The First amendment contains nearly every single right essential to democracy. Assembly, Speech, Press, Redress of Greviances, and Freedom of Religion/Prohibition of State sponsored religion. This fricking government has made inroads against every single part of this amendment, and I have no doubt they'd love to see it weakened.
So don't let your disdain for Fox news blind you on this one. Whenever the government starts imposing penalties against people for publishing true statements, its everybodys problem.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
"what part of "no law" did the legislatures not understand?"
what part of "Congress shall make no law...." did YOU miss?
AND - how does requiring a reporter to obey the same laws and judicial orders that I have to obey abridge the freedom of the press. No one in this case is asking for prior restraint on publication or prosecution for publication; apparently a crime is being investigated (and I do believe that tipping off the subject of an investigation, allowing them to destroy evidence, is a crime).
I am no fan of government, but I am also no fan of knee-jerk responses to complex issues. A reporter for the NY Times is not above the law.
So what I want to know is this: what part of "no law" did the legislatures not understand?
I think you are mistaken in this case. It was not the legislative but the judiciary branch requiring them to cough up phone records. While the legislators are not to be excused, the violations of our constitution today occur far more often in a judiciary that is increasingly acting according to personal opinions rather than to the intent of the law.
Amen brother. Its especially depressing because the USA is always touted as 'the land of the free'. Its like emails that start with "this is not a scam" If you have to keep telling everyone how free you are, thats a warning sign right there. :(
I like the USA in general, hell I even got married there, but right now, its not somewhere I'd like to live
Whether your Republican or Democrat, you need to start fighting this slide towards an authoritarian state asap.
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Just because you are a reporter you aren't above the law. If I or anyone else would have to reveal something under subpoena or on a witness stand if it were part of a criminal case (and leaking classified documents is a crime), then so should the high and mighty New York Times.
I am sick and tired of the Times and other blatantly anti war publications like them putting our soldiers and our security at risk.
If you work at an agency and you think there is something illegal going on the proper procedure is to call the US Attorney's office, not the New York Times. The person who does the former is a whistleblower. The person who does the latter is a criminal.
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Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
But they didn't make any laws. They simply stated that reporters are not above the law. Nothing new here, move along please.
As always when reading this stuff, my first thought was that the media shouldn't have gotten so obsessed with damaging the Bush administration over the Plame "scandal" nonsense that they demanded that punishing leakers take priority over all else.
The irony in your statement is that there would be no reason to try and "damage the Bush administration" if they hadn't willfully and maliciously acted to damage Valerie Plame's career and personal safety, simply for being married to someone that spoke out about the lies on WMDs.
You think that reporters should be punished for "damaging the reputation of government?" What kind of fascist, repressive country do you think we live in? What part of "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;" don't you understand?
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
The reporters could probably (and arguably should) be charged with interference with an ongoing investigation. The right to a free press is (in my understanding) a right to write, for public consumption. It is not a right to take any random action in order to obtain facts for said writing.
If I have been assigned to write a story about the psychological condition of an executioner, am I justified in grabbing someone and "executing" them in the furtherance of my story? Of course not; it's both illegal and wrong.
It would, in my opinion, be one thing if they had been tipped off by this anonymous source, sat on it until the raids had actually happened, then used the information in their stories. Instead, they took the information they got, and contacted the targets of the raids in advance. Absurd.
Reporters are not magic special people. They should abide by the same laws and rules of reasonable conduct as the rest of us.
The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
You need to draw a distinction between "The Press" and "Television Media".
There are plenty of newspapers and news websites out there that really try to do a good job, break a lot of ground, and do the sort of reporting that holds the government in check.
I agreee with you about TV though. God they suck. They ALL suck. I firmly believe that the goddamn Daily Show is the best news on television, and that is so very, very sad.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
See, you're exactly the kind of person I was talking about in my other post in this thread: the kind who keeps making excuses because he doesn't want to face the fact that we're screwing ourselves!
It doesn't fucking matter what country this guy is from; it changes nothing about our problems, right here, right now! Stop shooting the messenger, and stop rationalizing that our problems are OK because the rest of the world sucks too. Our country was never intended to be like the rest of the world; if it were, we would have just made Washington a fucking king and been done with it.
The only way to fix our problems is to fix our problems, and the only way that can happen is if everyone wakes the fuck up and realizes that they exist. Starting now. And starting with you!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
So your saying that if I pass a law that says you can't run red lights, and some member of the press runs a redlight in presuit of their story, that law should be stricken from the books.
Get real, reporters are NOT above the law.
Please stop forming any opinions on what goes on here. Seriously, the news-ish bites on Slashdot are not a good way to get your information on the state of the US. To name just a few problems:
1) Slashdot is highly sensationalistic when it comes to political stories. They tend to report things in a way that casts an extreme negative light on the situation, leaving out relivants mitigating facts and such.
2) They tend to not check sources and facts very well. Heck they don't even tend to check if they've already posted something very well. You cannot rely on teh information as all that accurate.
3) Slashdot has very anti-government, even perhaps anarchistic tendancies. They see most any effort to control things as a massive problem.
Well a site like that, you don't really want to use for your news, just like you probably wouldn't want to rely on a more right-wing, pro government site as they are going to downplay anything bad the government does.
Yes, bad things happen in the US. Always has been, probably always will be. Police abuse their power, the government has corruption problems, etc. However I don't care where you live, you do a little research, you'll find your country has the same kinds of problems. There's no magical perfect bastion of freedom. All countries have faults.
However the US is not a dictatorship, we have not fallen in to a police state, etc. There are disturbing trends right now, things that many of us are working to fight against, but it's not like we are in the horrible way, which a revolution is the only way out of. If you believe that, well then you've been getting your news from the wrong sources.
If you are truly interested in what's going on, you need to spend some time on it. You need to get information form multiple sources, you need to try and hear all sides of the story, you need to make sure you understand all the facts. Don't run off screaming the end of the world when Slashdot reports an incident of rights abuses.
If there's no shield law, meeting with sources in secret isn't going to help. If you know their name, and you're compelled to testify, you have to give it up or go to jail. It doesn't matter if you met with them in person, over a disposable cellphone, via IM, etc.
And so how, in this fantasy world if yours where reporters are all getting rich for reporting on crime, would someone get a person who might be marginally involved in carrying out a small part of a much larger crime, to inform the public about the much larger crime, and who is carrying it out?
As I've said before, whistleblower laws very often just don't work. People are either not give the whistleblower status that they deserve, or retribution is carried out by others, or under guise that it's for something else.
Protecting the source is the only way these things will ever come out. Do you really think it would have been better for the country if Deep Throat had not come forward? If so, there are a lot of totalitarian regimes I'm sure you'd be happy to live under. For myself, I prefer a free press.