This is WND doing what it always does, which is to take a portion of a document or story, and distort it to cause instant chagrin, and hype its readers into apoplexy. It is a deliberate lie.
This sentence has what is actually said in the bill exactly backwards, and anyone would do him/herself a favor by NOT using, or counting on, WND as a reliable source for information.
This bill is to protect NON federal entities from being compelled by Federal entities to reveal that which is private. And if you would read read it to completion, it protects communications between private citizens, networks, and communications companies as well.
It is protection FROM federal government, not FOR it.
Free Flow of Information Act of 2009 - Prohibits a federal entity (an entity or employee of the judicial or executive branch or an administrative agency of the federal government), in any matter arising under federal law, from compelling a covered person to testify or produce any document unless a court makes specified determinations by a preponderance of the evidence, including determinations: (1) relating to exhaustion of alternative sources, (2) that the testimony or document sought is critical; (3) that disclosure of the information sources identity is necessary; and (4) that the public interest in compelling disclosure of the information or document involved outweighs the public interest in gathering or disseminating news or information. Allows a court, in making the last of those determinations, to consider the extent of any harm to national security.
Defines covered person as a person who regularly gathers, photographs, records, writes, edits, reports, or publishes information concerning matters of public interest for dissemination to the public for a substantial portion of the persons livelihood or substantial financial gain, including a supervisor, employer, parent, subsidiary, or affiliate of such a person. Excludes from that definition foreign powers and their agents and certain terrorist organizations and individuals.
WND has been doing this sort of thing for years. It is an unethical kind of journalism that fits more with, "My mother was an alien," than real, hard, truthful, factual news. You would not accept this shabbiness from HuffPo. Why accept it from WND?
Thanks, MestaMachine.
Ping to controversy.