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

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.

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.

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

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