Posted on 06/06/2013 5:23:07 AM PDT by Kaslin
In response to the acknowledged abuses of his own Justice Department, President Obama has urged Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to reintroduce legislation for a "journalist shield law." And in typical Washington fashion, the proposed act would do nothing to prevent the abuses that supposedly make the law so necessary.
We saw a similar response to the horrible Connecticut school shootings last December -- a raft of laws that wouldn't have prevented the tragedy in the first place. It seems that whenever government fails to do what it is supposed to do with the laws already on the books, the answer is to give the government even more power.
Ah, but proponents of journalist shield laws argue that such regulations actually limit the power of government by protecting the First Amendment rights of the press. But that begs the question. A journalist shield law must define who is a journalist and who isn't.
On May 26, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said on "Fox News Sunday" that the proposed shield law "still leaves an unanswered question. ... What is a journalist today, 2013? We know it's someone who works for Fox or AP, but does it include a blogger? Does it include someone who's tweeting? Are these people journalists and entitled to constitutional protection?"
Part of the problem stems from Durbin's apparent suggestion that the First Amendment protects only a free press. It also protects free speech, free assembly, freedom of worship and the right to petition the government for the redress of grievances. We all have these rights. The Washington Post's Bob Woodward has no more rights than my dentist.
And this is what is wrong with the idea of a federal shield law. One proposed version of the law says a "covered person" is someone who "for financial gain or livelihood, is engaged in journalism." In other words, a journalist is a professional. So, the government gets to decide who's a "real" journalist. That's a horrifying expansion in government authority.
Worse, many judges won't even go that far. For instance, an Illinois judge ruled last year that the popular website TechnoBuffalo didn't qualify for the same protections the state confers to "real" journalists. Cook County (Ill.) Circuit Judge Michael Panter said, "The content on TechnoBuffalo's website may inform viewers how to use certain devices or offer sneak peeks of upcoming technology, but that does not qualify the website as a 'news medium' or its bloggers as 'reporters.'"
So when this newspaper informs its readers about new gadgets or gives sneak peeks at upcoming technologies, that is journalism. But when a moneymaking website does the same thing, not so much.
In 2009, when the Free Flow of Information Act was last under consideration, Durbin and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., pushed to have bloggers and other second-class journalists stripped of protections, eliciting outrage from the left and right. Their stated concern was that bad actors -- terrorists, fraudsters, publicists -- would claim status as journalists in order to cause mischief and harm. Some critics, though, sniffed a haughty bigotry against "citizen journalists."
Columnist Leonard Pitts captured this attitude well when he proclaimed in 2010, "I do not believe in 'citizen journalism.' Yes, I know that's heresy. ... Yet I remain convinced that, with exceptions, citizen journalism is to journalism as pornography is to a Martin Scorsese film; while they may employ similar tools -- i.e., camera, lighting -- they aspire to different results."
Pitts' ire was aimed at figures such as James O'Keefe, who has embarrassed a lot of liberal institutions -- Planned Parenthood, National Public Radio and others -- with his hidden camera operations. With remarkable brevity, Pitts managed to include nearly everything that is mule-headed in this debate. "60 Minutes" became a journalistic icon by using hidden cameras in stings. But when citizen journalists use the same methods, it's akin to pornography. Why? Because the results aren't to Pitts' liking.
When James Madison wrote the First Amendment, he undoubtedly had in mind not just journalists but also the countless private, often anonymous, pamphleteers who often went after those in power with hammers and tongs. And that points to the heart of the matter. Journalism isn't a priestly caste or professional guild with special rights. It is an activity we all have a right to partake in. Whether it's a blogger with a virtual tip jar exposing malfeasance or "60 Minutes" making fraudulent charges about George W. Bush, there will always be good journalism and bad journalism.
It will undoubtedly be necessary from time to time for the government to distinguish between the two. But those instances should be exceedingly rare, and they should never hinge on who the government thinks is qualified to be a journalist in the first place.
New Jersey, of all places, had a recent landmark court decision in which a judge determined that a middle-aged housewife blogging from her home computer was covered under the state's "journalist shield law" and could not be prosecuted for refusing to name her sources of information she published online that was apparently leaked from inside a county or municipal government. That pretty much ensures that everyone is covered.
First amendment??? what stinkin first amendment? This reminds me of something posted here:
ABC News claimed yesterday that phone calls made by its reporters and journalists at the New York Times and Washington Post are being traced by the federal government as part of an investigation into leaks of classified information.
ABC Claims Government Traced Its Reporters’ Calls
New York Sun ^ | May 16,2006 | JOSH GERSTEIN
Posted on Tuesday, May 16, 2006 9:48:33 AM by Kaslin
And what is your point?
You dont see any similarity?
I could be wrong, but somehow I have a feeling that the attack on AP is only a ruse. Remember how the left including that arrogant pos occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave hates Fox News .
Perhaps same subject, but different publication and different article
Same subject, same FR poster...
worth a trip down memory lane to see what the comments were like on it back then in 2006.
To see if the constitution has changed any.
BTW did you hear about this?
NSA collecting phone records for millions of Verizon customers, report says
In the days preceding and following the adoption of the United States Constitution--the document which structures and limits the powers of Durbin's office and that of every other segment of the federal government--the circulation of ideas was accomplished in numerous ways. There were newspapers, pamphlets, speeches and other forms of oratory, broadsides and "committees of correspondence."
From the Massachusetts Historical Society web site come these paragraphs:
"Ignorance is slavery -
"By the early 1770s, Boston's patriot leaders have had many opportunities to rally townspeople against perceived injustices (usually acts of Parliament or other objectionable activities undertaken by the British government or soldiery). Men like Samuel Adams understand that an informed citizenry is the best weapon against unfavorable government policy. Political ignorance is simply another form of slavery. How do patriots impart political knowledge to such a vast audience? Ministers, newspaper publishers, and even the Massachusetts General Assembly work to educate the public, but in 1771, patriot leaders in Boston experiment with a new form of instruction. They initiate an annual town lecture, which will be held each year on 5 March, an important anniversary for Bostonians. Some colonial leaders are skeptical, and question whether the general public can be educated in the ways of politics through such popular means."
In the fall of 1772, Bostonians address the latest rumors from Parliament: judges of the Superior Court of Judicature will no longer be paid by the colony's General Court. Instead, judges will be paid directly from the royal treasury, using money collected by the American Board of Customs Commissioners. Fearing this new process will "pervert the judgment of men," Bostonians petition their selectmen to act. In the process of debating the matter, Samuel Adams proposes the creation of a corresponding society to gauge the sentiments of other Massachusetts towns. On 2 November 1772, a committee is born when the Boston selectmen vote to establish a twenty-one-member Committee of Correspondence.
The Committee's first assignment is to prepare a series of reports outlining colonists' rights and Parliament's infringements upon those rights. The reports are gathered into a single document that becomes known as the Boston Pamphlet. Copies of the pamphlet are distributed to every town in Massachusetts, and town leaders across the colony debate the wisdom of following in Boston's footsteps.
Many towns do eventually appoint their own committees of correspondence, a development that troubles governor Thomas Hutchinson. As advocates of the committee system boast that Bostonians (and their committee) will prove to be the "saviors of America," Hutchinson and his opponents take every opportunity to disparage the town's Committee of Correspondence.
More positive news arrives from the "patriotic province of Virginia" in the spring of 1773. The House of Burgesses proposes some enhancements to Boston's committee of correspondence idea. In response to Virginia's proposal, Massachusetts creates a colony-level committee of correspondence chaired by Samuel Adams. The rhetoric of freedom, rights, and liberty bandied about by politicians is soon adopted by other colonists struggling with issues of slavery. In one poignant broadside, four slaves petition the Massachusetts General Court, hoping that the "divine spirit of freedom" will extend to the thousands of men and women literally enslaved in the colonies.
By the summer of 1773, the committees of correspondence have yet another issue to debate and discuss. In May, Parliament passes the Tea Act, giving the East India Company a monopoly over the sale of tea in the colonies. Committees are quick to share their thoughts on this "impending evil," but will their vitriol be enough to stop the tea from coming?"
Why is it that now, in the Year 2013, we have a regime in place which fears the formation of groups of citizens who may call themselves "tea partiers," or any other such name who, like their forebears of the 18th and 19th Centuries, call for liberty and freedom from elected and appointed government officials and their oppressive rules, regulations and "taking" of their income?
The free circulation of ideas in America, with all the technology available today, has the potential for restoring the concepts of individual liberty which so-called "progressives" have censored from the nation's textbooks and public discourse. As in the founding period, with current technology and ability to circulate ideas, the time has come to follow John Adams advice and, "Let every sluice of knowledge be opened and set a-flowing." - A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1765
"The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing." - JOHN ADAMS, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law
"Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers." - A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1765
"Let the pulpit resound with the doctrines and sentiments of religious liberty. Let us hear the dangers of thralldom to our consciences from ignorance, extreme poverty, and dependence; in short, from civil and political slavery. Let us see delineated before us the true map of man. Let us hear the dignity of his nature, and the noble rank he holds among the works of God-that consenting to slavery is a sacrilegious breach of trust, as offensive in the sight of God as it is derogatory from our own honor or interest or happiness - and that God Almighty has promulgated from heaven liberty, peace, and goodwill to man!" - A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1765
"Set before us the conduct of our own British ancestors, who defended for us the inherent rights of mankind against foreign and domestic tyrants and usurpers, against arbitrary kings and cruel priests; in short against the gates of earth and hell." - A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1765
"They (the Puritans) saw clearly that of all the nonsense and delusion which had ever passed through the mind of man, none had ever been more extravagant than the notions of absolutions, indelible characters, uninterrupted successions, and the rest of those fantastical ideas, derived from the canon law, which had thrown such a glare of mystery, sanctity, reverence, and right reverend eminence and holiness around the idea of a priest as no mortal could deserve, and as always must, from the constitution of human nature, be dangerous to society. For this reason they demolished the whole system of diocesan episcopacy, and, deriding, as all reasonable and impartial men must do, the ridiculous fancies of sanctified effluvia from Episcopal fingers, they established sacerdotal ordination on the foundation of the Bible and common sense." - A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1765
"They even persuaded mankind to believe, faithfully and undoubtingly, that God Almighty had entrusted them with the keys of heaven, whose gates they might open and close at pleasure; with a power of dispensation over all the rules and obligations of morality; with authority to license all sorts of sins and crimes; with a power of deposing princes and absolving subjects from allegiance; with a power of procuring or withholding the rain of heaven and the beams of the sun; with the management of earthquakes, pestilence, and famine; nay, with the mysterious, awful, incomprehensible power of creating out of bread and wine the flesh and blood of God himself. All these opinions they were enabled to spread and rivet among the people by reducing their minds to a state of sordid ignorance and staring timidity, and by infusing into them a religious horror of letters and knowledge. Thus was human nature chained fast for ages in a cruel, shameful, and deplorable servitude to him and his subordinate tyrants, who, it was foretold, would exalt himself above all that was called God and that was worshipped." - A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1765
"But none of the means of information are more sacred, or have been cherished with more tenderness and care by the settlers of America, than the press. Care has been taken that the art of printing should be encouraged, and that it should be easy and cheap and safe for any person to communicate his thoughts to the public. And you, Messieurs printers, whatever the tyrants of the earth may say of your paper, have done important service to your country by your readiness and freedom in publishing the speculations of the curious. The stale, impudent insinuations of slander and sedition with which the gormandizers of power have endeavored to discredit your paper are so much the more to your honor; for the jaws of power are always opened to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing." - A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1765
"Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." - Thomas Jefferson
Shame on Jonah. He has fallen for the propaganda of those on the left who want it to be freedom of worship and not freedom of religion and the free exercise thereof.
Saw that earlier, it said this info was the result of a ‘National Security’ leak, just like the ones Holder is getting similar information (phone data) for to investigate similar leaks, circularly ironic.
Its seems like when the GOP pushed bills like patriot act that gave the government sweeping powers to spy on us they assumed that they would never again lose an election, that Dems would never be in charge and have those as tools to use against us.
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