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.'"

Comments

Ummmm....wikileaks is foreign

[Joce640k]

What does American law have to do with Wikileaks?

Re:Ummmm....wikileaks is foreign

[ras]

Hell, even Australia is doing censorship and filtering

As an Australian I feel compelled to correct this.

Certainly politicians have tried to get a filter implemented. In fact there have been a series of them. It started with Kim Beazly (leader of the opposition at the time, who first made it ALP Policy, the ALP being the mob who ran the country for the last 3 years), then we had Kevin Rudd (Prime Minster), Stephen Conroy (Communications Minister), Brian Harradine (independent who held the balance of power in the Senate), and Steve Fielding (who saw himself as Harradine's successor) all pushed very hard for it. They were aided and abetted some the local elites, such as Clive Hamilton (a Professor of Public Ethics and Vice-Chancellor's of Charles Sturt University) churning out papers in support of the filter. It is a truly impressive list of heavy hitters.

Yet, they failed. Now the opposition has formally rejected the idea it looks dead and buried.

For me it was a painful period in Australia's political history. Every time the issue was brought up on a forum that allowed public comments, the comments ran at about 20 to 1 against the idea. Regardless this mob tried to ram it though for 3 electoral cycles. Had they succeeded you could have truly said Australia democracy was doing a lousy job of representing the people doing the voting.

But despite having their hands firm on the leavers of power and the public megaphones (no newspaper editorial outside of the tech industry strongly rejected the idea) they didn't succeed. I don't know whether this means Australia's hands are safer than the US's, as the US has a better constitution. But it certainly has given me a new found faith in Australian style democracy.

Re:LOLWUT?

[M. Kristopeit]

if anyone tries to control me, i'll respond with my own soft point issues.

Re:Journalists vs. Wikileaks

[darien.train]

I show up as anonymous because of a site error I'm currently experiencing, not out of cowardice as the auto-naming system implies.

If you think that most US newspapers are doing a good job just look at those statistics about people thinking Obama is a Muslim.

I thought Wikileaks was pretty cool until it published names of Afgan informants which is certainly not cool for many reasons. SO...both groups are looking pretty crappy these days and it's hard to take a side.

Go ahead and shoot the messenger.

The code of ethics for the industry

[countertrolling]

From now on, the Comics Code will apply to all accredited news outlets with the force of law. Everybody else will be ordered to shut up.

Re:LOLWUT?

[blair1q]

A sports reporter tweeted on Monday (this week or last week, i'm getting this second hand) that a ballplayer's suspension would be 5 games instead of 4.

Numerous outlets picked it up and ran it as news.

Thing is, he made it up. Deliberately. To demonstrate how many news outlets do zero confirmatory investigation before running stories.

So what did his employer do?

Fired him.

I.e., it's going to get worse before it gets better.

Re:In an alternate historical timeline

[Chris Burke]

Richard M. Nixon, after successfully driving to repeal the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, goes on to third and fourth presidential terms.

Thanks in no small part to Dr. Manhattan winning Vietnam for us.

Re:LOLWUT?

[M. Kristopeit]

so being a geek is laying down and doing whatever the media tells you to do...

the tag line on the site suggests this is a "nerd" site however, and fighting oppression with force certainly does matter.

however the REAL point of my argument that you obviously missed, busy doing whatever geeks do, was: THE MEDIA IS NOT IN CONTROL.

Re:LOLWUT?

[Threni]

A lot longer than that, if you believe/read Chomsky. Challenging the wrong people is a career damaging move.

Re:Thin end of the wedge

[CheshireCatCO]

There's a difference between saying that you only get the protection if you're somehow accredited (whether it be by the government or by a separate, professional body) and saying you can or cannot publish stories at all. (As with free speech, you can publish what you want, but you may face consequences for publishing things, like libelous or classified material.)

In the end, this would be a new protection that the constitution doesn't appear to already grant journalists, so it's hard to see that not extending it to everyone is necessarily unconstitutional.

Re:LOLWUT?

[Monkey-Man2000]

I don't condemn Drudge at all! I congratulate him for putting "real" journalist's feet to the fire like Jon Stewart (oh the irony).

My point is: how exactly is he different than Wikileaks? That's my point! He was famous for headlining the Monica Lewinsky scandal -- exposing abuse at the expense of the American interest. He's as much a journalist as anything Wikileaks exposes! Likewise, my hope is that Wikileaks will become a prime bookmark (maybe not homepage) for journalists in the future but the QUANTITY of novel information they have provided is unprecedented. But the "real" journalists still use these antiquated guys as critical tools for their "journalism" to lead their stories. Not much of an investigative journalism budget for MSM now-a-days.

Again, non-wire, original journalism is NOT in the MSM. I think we can both agree on that, no matter what your views are (unless your the head of CNN/Fox/MSNBC)...

Really, I think everyone in the US can agree that the MSM is shit and we need to finance independment (non-corporate) media. I know the tea parties have my back on that. Liberals would probably agree on that as well!. They would just have to STRICTLY restrict corporate financing.

What would the world be like then?!

Re:Thin end of the wedge

[Trintech]

While this is certainly true, that list is more a matter of meeting the broad definition of religion and being non-profit rather than having to meet a focused set of criteria. For instance, there are many secular institutions on that list of 'approved churches'. This is only possible because there isn't a focused criteria of things like: must worship a god(s), must hold a worship service, etc that one must meet. If, to be a journalist, one only had to meet the definition of journalism (ie. the act of reporting news) then these two cases would be the same.