Free Flow of Information Act Passes the House: The Scribes in the USA Have A Fine Horse in That Race
Oct 17th, 2007 | 8 responses
We had a board meeting of the Authors Guild today. Three of us on scratchy speaker-phone from mountain and desert: Scott Turow who faithfully adds in his legal insights, Daniel Hoffman the poet who is helping to lead the charge in Congress to allow authors to exclude donated papers from tax levies, and yours truly. The other board members were face-to-face in the New York offices. Roy Blount, a smart and funny author, is currently our President, and in his soft twang commented about the progress being made in the US House for Richard Lugar’s and Mike Pence’s Free Flow of Information Act, also called The Media Shield Law.
The Authors Guild has a horse in that race, for we represent over 9000 American career authors and many of their interests regarding legal, legislative and publishing affairs. Many of those authors do investigative work to write their books; many are also journalists. But, all investigative writers and authors are watching this bill running through the House closely. Mainly because a media shield act has been brought forward dozens of times in Congress, and failed to make it into law each time.
Our legal counsel, who are involved with both Federal and State legislatures, explained how President Bush’s Department of Justice has been pushing against this bill coming forward… but if said bill passed the House today (it did), it would then be debated in the Senate with good odds of passing. More so, because of solid bipartisan support it is likely it will overcome an expected veto from the Executive Branch.
The reason we all have a fine horse in that race, one that needs to ‘be given his head,” that is, free to run full out without being held back by a ‘hard hand on the reins’… is that in the last year, 11 journalists were either sentenced to jail or publicly threatened with a jail sentence when they refused to reveal sources to whom they’d promised anonymity.
Although the public might dislike or rally to each of these threatened journalists, liking or disliking the journos’ politics is less a fastening point.
A central point is that when threat and force are used by ‘big guys’ to try to scare witnesses’ names out of the mouths of those who promised to protect their sources… far more than just the journos are fettered…
The everywoman, the everyman, those valuable souls who are often our heroes in whistle blowing, go silent themselves, like once reflective windows now shattered by a relentless ‘don’t speak or else’ carpet bombing.
Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are not always ever-expanding freedoms that allow all speech and all tactics, no matter their ill or unlawful effects or deadly outcomes.
But the nuclei of those freedoms are bulwarks meant to stand against oppression and suppression should a stable government suddenly go awry. Those freedoms are meant as protections from those with financial or influential strength enough to crush others without thought, to shelter ‘the little guy’ from those grown fat and fearless illicitly.
In this sense, the freedoms are a refuge for the slingshot men and women of the world who are, often enough, thrown up against the spike-armed Goliaths who literally don’t care who they harm or how.
The tremor that has gone through the journo community in the last year, which includes writers of fact, as well as non-fiction writers of many kinds… comes from seeing we live in a world now, where only five conglomerates own/ control most media.
As media has become more and more amalgamated; TV grafted to radio grafted to newspapers grafted to publishing companies grafted to internet properties with great reach… this urges that a huge raft of individual reporters, writers, bloggers, authors, journos… must become anlagen… a primary source that has to stand separately from the greater entities surrounding, to thrive by being of and to its own self alone.
To take the stance of anlagen, a cell with a nucleus unto oneself rather than an affiliate or symbiotic relative, a foundation rather than an ornament of whatever power darling… a journo has to be able to channel information without taking on the color of his or her detractors, or his or her granter of perks and kudos.
Subpoenas issued to force the journo into the gene pool of ‘all-alikes’ because the greater powers say so, is anathema to the anlagen who is the fundament of a freestanding press.
Subpoenas to force journos to violate confidences means citizens no longer receive critical information, but instead pre-approved info from some repeating rifle filled with wet, dead marshmallows…
The idea of free press isn’t to gallivant and preen, it’s to serve… the needs of human beings for vital news that stirs them, inspires, educates, saves, perseveres, rebuilds… awakens, hits them where they live: giving souls a chance to seize their health, map social structures, keep the sanctity of their homes, support family, reveal opportunities for work, inclusion, invention …
And yet also to expose exclusion, exploitation, starvations of various kinds and poisoning of terrains, ideas, and conducts the public, in all their variegations, hold interest in or hold sacred or hold out hope that wrongs will be righted. And more, much more.
This bill sets national standards that must be met before Federal officials can issue a subpoena to a person in media with regard to any civil or criminal case. It definitively provides that a journo cannot be compelled to reveal their sources.
The bill does not give journos a license to break the law in order to gather news. It does however, clearly grant them the same rights, in the public interest, we allow shrinks and clergy… to keep the confidentiality of their patients, counselees.
Thirty-one states already have a ‘shield law.’ In times of war not agreed to by an overwhelming majority of the people, ill-tested foods and medicines, times when huge conglomerates have more power than kings, credit card companies charge 30% interest without confrontation or explanation, and with all else of nefarious deeds that harm the public going on, it seems good that perhaps now all 50 states will protect the ones who have little more than a sling shot and real cojones o ovarios… and will bring home the goods, if only they are allowed.
There’s a saying in our family of Magyars from my father’s side… a saying that comes from the plains where the tribal men love their horses as much as their families: It’s about being able to live unencumbered, remembering that the Magyars have been swooped down upon by every marauding group that came over the Carpathians. But still, this proud ethnic group managed to stay alive as a people. It’s the old men and women riders who say: Give a mare or a stallion its head, and it’ll run its heart out for you.
Same for those who scribe.
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8 Responses to “Free Flow of Information Act Passes the House: The Scribes in the USA Have A Fine Horse in That Race”
That’s the best explanation I’ve seen yet of what this bill is all about. I must say, I detect a certain revolutionary spirit wafting around the edges of your words – must be residual energy from 18th century America.
Dr. Estes is descended from the wild Magyars of Central Europe? Hahahaha…so that is the source of her passionate writing style!
Dr. E’s is posting here on a very important issue that seems to not be getting the attention it deserves in the crazed snakepit of American politics today. But while the lunatics run the asylum, it is the folks quietly working in the background who keep the ship afloat.
OT…but also, I would like to add that I thought Dr. E’s comment on the Rhodes’ farce and Internet urban myth yesterday very perceptive. As is sometimes the case, Dr. E seems to capture the kernel of the thing while everyone else is running about like chickens with their heads cut off.
Meant to comment then, but I was busy at the time running about looking for my head
me too MarloweC, often running around looking for head…. or else chicken.
To clarify: Latina from immigrant Mexican folks, adopted as an older child into a family of immigrant Hungarians. I’ve four parents who I held with great love. Sadly, they’re all gone now, but both the anachronistic cultures I was raised in, are sometimes hard to tell apart; the Magyars and the Mexicanos both adore hot red pepper and dance themselves into the ground at the drop of a hat. lol
JSpencer, I’m trying to understand if the bill has a ‘prevent’, that is, either by not stating bloggers are included or by establishing that ONLY journos/ authors et al with ‘contracts’ are shielded by this law re their sources. It will be interesting.
“…residual energy from 18th c. America”… you made me smile. I’m almost old enough to have danced with Thomas Jeffereson, but not quite. lol. On a serious note, I do read ‘the old guys’ and am often amazed at the meeting of lyricism, vision, and pragmatics present in much of their works. Some moderns don’t realize the roots of democracy, as written, are often parsed in logic, high oratory and poetry.
dr.e
The case for a shield law can be made to look very attractive as long as one only discusses the interests of the press versus the interests of the government. That, I gather, is why advocates of the shield law never talk about any other interests.
The sad fact, though, is that sometimes government officials smear ordinary, innocent citizens. Often, this occurs when information about an unsolved criminal case is leaked by law enforcement sources who frankly have no idea who committed the crime but who nonetheless want the public to think they’re doing a bangup job in the investigation. When that happens, the victim of the smear may lose everything — job, home, health, even friends. And the damage is permanent — if you don’t believe that, Google Richard Jewell and read his obituaries.
I’ve been writing about this for a long time. Too long, perhaps. I have pointed out that the “whstleblower” situations that Big Media uses like poster children are not actually the cases generating the subpoenas; that the cases generating the subpoenas often involve governmental misconduct as well as journalism that no one would rush to defend. I have challenged supporters of the shield law to explain how the victims of anonymous smears can possibly obtain justice in the courts if the reporters won’t even do what every citizen has to do in court: give the evidence he happens to have. I have been met with silence. The interests of the victims are inconvenient to the champions of this debate.
Meanwhile, Big Media keeps churning out editorials on the subject, most of them transparently based on talking points circulated by the Newspaper Association of America or some similar trade group. It is a gigantic bait-and-switch, in which legislators pretend to be voting for more coverage like Woodward & Bernstein gave us in Watergate, but in actuality are voting for more media circuses like the anthrax investigation, the Ramsey fiasco, the Wen Ho Lee affair, and of course poor Richard Jewell. It would be wonderful to hear what the debate on this topic would be like if the victims wrote checks as big as the media conglomerates do.
I’m reading Naomi Wolf’s new book and the work that the Author’s Guild is doing to promote the shield law seems awfully important in that context.
Jilly, thanks for the reference to Naomi Wolf’s book. I agree with you that the shield bill is “awfully important in that context,” but I think we may disagree as to which side the shield helps.
I haven’t read Wolf’s book, but I’ve seen her “Top Ten” list of things the government can do to turn a democracy into a repressive police state, and I think the government can make extensive use of anonymous smears to further steps 1 (invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy), 5 (harass citizens’ groups), 7 (target key individuals), and 9 (brand dissenters as traitors). This can all be done by the “thug caste” created in step 2.
I think you may be of the opinion that the shield law will allow reporters to expose all this to the public view. But the press doesn’t need a shield law for that; they’re the recipients of the leaks! They already know who anonymously smeared Richard Jewell, Wen Ho Lee, Patsy Ramsey,Steven Hatfill, and Brandon Mayfield — and they won’t tell us. The point of the shield bill is to give them the right to go on not telling us. To support that in the name of the free flow of information is positively Orwellian.
If this bill passes, we should be more afraid, not less.
hmm let me think about that. I’m slow.
Thoughtful comments from many sides… there are many sides, it is true. mgrannis; “…cases generating the subpoenas often involve governmental misconduct as well as journalism that no one would rush to defend.” Fight the good fight. We can use many more articles and books about how some, regardless of profession, when given the troth of carrying high public trust, drive to a dearth of ethics instead.
The thugs who break laws or try to exploit/hide behind them to try to conceal their ill liaisons/ acts’ are specifically not covered by shield law at issue. Sometimes, I think we have to do far too much chasing around of those who do bad-wrong, instead of those who do the heavy lifting to help culture evolve more usefully. But, I hear for that to be changed, we’d all have to live on Tralfamador …next planet over.
dr.e