Slashdot Mirror
Newspapers Cut Wikileaks Out of Shield Law
An anonymous reader writes "The US press has been pushing for a (much needed) federal shield law, that would allow reporters to protect their sources. It's been something of a political struggle for a few years now, and things were getting close when Wikileaks suddenly got a bunch of attention for leaking all those Afghan war documents. Suddenly, the politicians involved started working on an amendment that would specifically carve out an exception for Wikileaks so that it would not be covered by such a shield law. And, now, The First Amendment Center is condemning the newspaper industry for throwing Wikileaks under the bus, as many in the industry are supporting this new amendment, and saying that Wikileaks doesn't deserve source protection because 'it's not journalism.'"
Welcome the very, very messed up world of journalism law in the early 21st Century. Tech advances, the law plays catch up.
Your reading list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libel_tourism
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/08/26/speech-act-now-a-law-big-win-for-libel-reform/
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:_V2BY9JufdkJ:immi.is/%3Fl%3Den%26p%3Dvision+immi.is&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a
It's that the exception reads like it's directed at Wikileaks, not that it names Wikileaks directly. Basically, it's limited to news sources with "editorial control", I believe.
On what planet? Here on earth journalism has always been about what will sell papers or garner eyeballs.
I mean seriously, the drek quoted above gets posted and moderated 'insightful' every time a story about the media posted - but it is not now and never has been true.
US Politicians incorrectly believe that the US owns the entire internet.
Actually, there is an acknowledged problem that "American interests" (i.e., US-registered corporations) own and operate a large fraction of the world's international cables, and almost all of the intercontinental cables. So it's easy for the US government to think of at least the "Internet backbone" as US property.
The Internet might be a better place if this problem were fixed.
Of course, the corporate world is slowly becoming a truly international culture that is independent of mere governments, so maybe the problem is being fixed. Whether this is an improvement isn't clear.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Drudge became famous (infamous?) after he broke a hard news story that the editors at Newsweek decided to bury out of political favoritism. So while you seem to condemn Drudge for his effect on journalism, he got his break precisely because old media had already abandoned journalism for cronyism.
Sure, he mixes a ton of tabloid "news" in with hard reporting, plus aggregates news from other sources, but we've seen that for decades too.
Drudge is only noteworthy because he showed that a small time nobody can defeat the incestuous world of maintstream reporting, where the cocktail circuit is more important than keeping an eye on the powerful and educating readers. He started the trend of watching the watchers to keep them honest by reporting the things they wanted to bury.
It's true:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20100831/sp_yblog_upshot/washington-post-suspends-columnist-for-twitter-hoax
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
All y'all obviously don't know the history of the news business. Vis. Randolph Hearst, or even more, the famous Tom Paine. The hypothesis of objective reporting has never been, and never will be, fact. ... :)
Except for what I write. That's all objective truth!
if you look at pre anarchy and post anarchy Somalia you will see that the people there were much, much, much, much better off without the central authority.
In case anyone is wondering about the source for such a counter-intuitive claim, he's talking about Peter Leeson's paper Better Off Stateless: Somalia Before and After Government Collapse.
On the flip side, some of Leeson's conclusions are in dispute.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
So is defending the Khmer Rouge.
Good thing he never did that then. When both sides in a war are committing atrocities, pointing out that both sides are doing so is not defending either, no matter how many people on the one side insist you must be "defending" the other when you attack them. Also, if you tell a lie about someone, and I point out it's a lie, I'm not defending that person, I'm defending the truth. It's easier to dismiss criticism against someone if large amounts of it are untrue. Those who exaggerate the case against someone are doing their own cause a disservice far more than those who point out their errors.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
It's actually around 10% of their funding. They tell you the percentage of corporate funding during their fund raisers..
I don't like the corporate "underwriting" either but most of the companies are pretty benign and out of those a lot are educational foundations not for-profit companies.
I don't know how many years on this Earth I got left. I'm going to get real weird with it. - Frank Reynolds
Meaning, mods have done zero confirmatory investigation before "doing their job."
You assume?
Or they could have done a quick Google search beforehand. How do you know they didn’t?
Oh, and apparently he was suspended, not fired.
http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100901/znyt05/9013014&template=printpicart
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.