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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.'"
Wikileaks doesn't deserve source protection because 'it's not journalism.
Did the news industry forget what journalism is?
Anything can be found funny, from a certain point of view.
What does American law have to do with Wikileaks?
No sig today...
Journalism used to be about taking risks to bring critical public interest information to everyone, with a strong ethic and moral code. Now it seems that to most of the industry, it's about finding out what trouble Lindsay Lohan will get into next.
...do journalists need special bonus rights over and above the standard package?
What is the problem to which this is the solution?
Wouldn't it be nice if we had politicians who did what's right for once, rather than what's politically expedient?
Yeah, and I want a pet unicorn, too.
Free Martian Whores!
If these protections - like being able to film cops at demonstrations - apply only to "accredited journalists" (or whatever you want to call them) then how long will it be before onerous demands are required to gain accreditation?
I understand in some ways why they want to a closed shop and shut out bloggers and other herberts who they perceive as amateurs. But, so the proverb says, be careful what you ask for - you might just get it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Regardless of whether or not you support wikileaks, the method for taking one's rights is to first make a single exception that has some significant support, then follow it by expanding the law to include more and more exceptions, until finally some politician can say, "Well, how do we nail an *exception* masquerading as part of the general public?" and BAM, you have a new, inclusive restriction on your rights. The stable state of laws is always one of all or nothing. The moment you slip into in between, the law will move towards whichever end the government prefers. I don't get how the journalism doesn't understand that by making one exception, they lay the groundwork for more exceptions to be made, until eventually there is no source protection.
"Going to war without the French is like going deer hunting without your accordion." ~General Norman Schwarzkopf
This is unfuckingbelievable. The so-called journalists offering up Wikileaks as a sacrificial lamb should be ashamed of themselves.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
I give up... I'm leaving the country. Europe, here I come. Freedom of speech and the press was really all America had going for it anymore... now we're eroding that as well.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
Our "friends" at the newspapers like it when they're allowed to keep information from the public and then publish it for the sensationalism. To have someone else horn in on their territory is not to be accepted. In the last 20 years I've seen the "news" business go from fact driven reports to "newstainment". I'd rather read the information that Wikileaks puts on their website and make my own decisions based on the FACTS. Wikileaks is more of a journalist trying to put out the information they get so that we aren't keep in the dark by politicians, TV news monkeys, and the "We'll do whatever our government tells us to do" newspapers.
Apologies for the rant; I just get a little P.O.ed when the big guys are trying to squish the little guys who are willing to show us what's really going on.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
Cancel your subscription, or stop buying the paper.... All seven of you...
Woodward and Bernstein are declared "not journalists", "Deep Throat" is unmasked and secretly prosecuted, the Watergate Hotel remains just another uninteresting building in the District of Columbia, and Richard M. Nixon, after successfully driving to repeal the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, goes on to third and fourth presidential terms.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
The whole idea is flawed. There should be no special rights for journalists.
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.
I don't know how many years on this Earth I got left. I'm going to get real weird with it. - Frank Reynolds
Or, maybe they're not cowardly, they just don't believe in the same things that you do.
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.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
This.
Wikileaks is not journalism. It has its value, certainly. In some ways it's complimentary to traditional journalism; in other ways it's essentially supplanted or usurped roles held by traditional journalism. But it's not the same thing.
It has freedoms and advantages journalists don't; conversely, it's in our best interest as a society that journalists have some additional protections that the rest of us that aren't journalists don't need. Hell, dictionary.com publishes a lot of information/documents I find useful, but it's not a journalist and doesn't need this shield law either.
Let's also not forget that the greater freedom Wikileaks enjoys also means less checks on its power. Maybe Julian Assange is the second coming of the religious figure of your choice and he'd never allow anything to be published that isn't true or misleading, but that doesn't mean that (insert name of person associated with political group or religious group that you dislike) won't create WhateverLeaks tomorrow and "leak" a bunch of bogus documents with the same freedoms. Our systems of law need to plan for the worst among us as well as the best.
But this is Slashdot, where anything related to Wikileaks mostly qualifies for knee-jerk support or condemnation, as appropriate, rather than any kind of rational analysis.
In many jurisdictions you require a permit to own a gun. You require additional tax stamps to purchase certain kinds of guns as well in all jurisdictions. This has been ruled to be ok per the second amendment. Regulating isn't restricting according to the court.
Now perhaps you disagree, but then perhaps you disagree only in the case of speech. However you can see where this stuff starts sneaking in. When you start trying to do end runs around the Constitution in one area, it establishes precedent to do so in other areas.
Sort of funny to see someone write about how the "shield law" is "much needed" and complain that it won't apply to everyone in the same paragraph. The whole point of a "shield law" is to provide special rights for a limited set of people.
For regular folks, if the cops have reason to believe that you know something about a crime, you'll get subpoenaed and required to testify, under penalty of perjury, potentially against your will. Journalists seem to think they ought to be exempt from the regular laws.
You can't give everyone an exemption or they'll claim they were "reporting" when they drunkenly bragged that they knew who killed Mr. Body. That's the problem with the shield law idea.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Shame on the "journalists" for this. They obviously do not understand the principals they rely on.
People do not study their history well, they learn maybe about major events, not about how people actually lived, and so they repeat bullshit over and over. As such a lot of people tend to be Neverwases. They look back to the good old days, where crime was low, people respected their elders, the press was honest and life was grand. You know, a past that never was.
Yellow journalism has been the norm for a long time. There are publications that are better, and periods where things over all improve because of some inspiring people, but yellow journalism is the norm.
But people don't study their history so things are always "getting worse." The press is "worse" now than ever (even though there is more independent journalism), crime is "worse" (though is has been trending down for like 4 decades), kids are lazy, people are stupid, music is bad, etc, etc, etc. All shit that more or less every generation has said and it has always been bullshit.
Wikileaks doesn't deserve source protection because 'it's not journalism.'"
Considering what "journalism" has become, this is actually a compliment.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
You have the right to a free press.
Where did it say you have the right to aid and abet crime to develop your stories?
You didn't. So you can be held in contempt, i.e., jailed while you refuse to reveal your accomplices/sources, for years, if the police think you got the story from a criminal.
In lieu of a shield law we have a mish-mash of case law that may or may not be rational across jurisdictions and may or may not cover a general set of cases that have not yet occurred.
Some people think this is a hole in the right to a free press, and are trying to plug it.
But not too much, because clearly there are criminals, like Assange, who will masquerade as "journalists" to commit their crimes. They should also look at not allowing protection for actual aiding and abetting, so we don't end up with a class of journalists who commit crimes in order to get stories on them (you hear me, Spider-Man!?).
You can't give everyone an exemption
It would be almost like you had to give everyone a set of clearly enumerated rights, and that would take some kind of bill.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Chomsky belongs to the same group as Steve Jobs and Rush Limbaugh and RMS. These people are not as common as you make out. Reality distortion fields that work on some (or most) of the people all of the time are a rare achievement.
I was watching Chomsky debates on YouTube the other day. It's hard to figure out what he's actually doing in his debating tactic. He seems to be convinced that human agency is a straight line, and therefore nearly any unknown can be brushed off the table at the first hint of smoking gun.
One tactic he used in the videos I watched boiled down to "some high level government official once wrote in a memo a bald confession of the true motive behind the initiative". He often adds something to the effect that "you can read it yourself". The logical foundation seems to be that high level government officials never colour outside the lines and that a certain type of memo that spills the beans negates 1000 official communications that adhere to the party line. I'm sure there's a grain of truth to that. Chomsky never pauses to assess whether it's a small grain or a large grain. That seems to be the essence of his rhetorical style: all grains of truth contrary to the hegemonic administration are created equal under God.
I've never been much of a Chomsky fan, but he's worth listening to from time to time.
Speaking of Rush, his debating tactics are certainly worse as noted by an irate movie critic. Put up or shut up
Rush has two primary demographics: the stupid, whom he addles, and the smug, who enjoy watching the former. This simple act never seems to grow stale.
Then we can certainly do without whatever *is* called "journalism".
you had me at #!