Who Gets to Play Journalist?

An academic question becomes a pressing legal issue.

Matt Welch from the June 2005 issue

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Some of the same journalism-establishment voices who were happy to place limits on publishing corporate information then are trying now to restrict journalist shield laws to a professional fraternity that--unlike those dirty bloggers--shares their reportorial values and mores. "I don't think the reporter's privilege to maintain confidential sources should be granted to such practitioners of what is at best pseudo-journalism," Shaw huffed in a March 27 column. "If the courts allow every Tom, Dick and Matt who wants to call himself a journalist to invoke the privilege to protect confidential sources...that would ultimately damage society as much as it would the media."

Now Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) is proposing a federal shield law. It does not specify whether weblogs will be covered. It does cover the publisher of a "periodical," leaving enough interpretative wiggle room for Volokh and others to conclude that blogs would qualify, but Pence spokesman Matt Lloyd says, "It doesn't cover bloggers per se unless they're part of an incorporated Web site, like a news organization." The issue, he says, will likely be addressed more specifically in the fall, when Congress is expected to debate the bill.

Should bloggers be able to protect their sources in front of a judge? Is federal law the appropriate remedy to journalists' being jailed for contempt? I lean toward yes and yes, for constitutional, anti-governmental, and personal reasons. I think the First Amendment should be applied as broadly as possible, I want the government to have less power to compel� information from citizens, and I want maximum latitude in my work.

But you can also argue that in the balance of free expression, the legalities just don't matter that much. Free speech seems to become more legally constrained each year, yet free expression continues to boom. If bloggers are left unshielded, that will only serve to enlarge an already conspicuous paradox: that the people with the most press freedom seem the least willing to use it.�