By secretly seizing business and personal telephone records of Associated Press reporters and editors the Obama Administration has provided ammunition for advocates of a federal shield law.
Society of Professional Journalists president Sonny Albarado called the act “shameful and outrageous.”
This incident proves once again the need for a federal Shield Law. Prosecutors, unlike reporters, have subpoena power to compel testimony, yet lazy prosecutors often prefer to go after reporters’ notes and records rather than do the hard investigative work to dig out information without trampling on the First Amendment.
More than 100 journalists work in the offices where the 20 phone lines were located during April and May of 2012, the time period covered by the record seizure.
AP President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt called the seizure “overbroad” because the “records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period.”
Although the government has provided no justification for the seizure, it has stated publicly that it is investigating a May 7, 2012, AP story about “a CIA operation in Yemen that stopped an al-Qaida plot in the spring of 2012 to detonate a bomb on an airplane bound for the United States.”
According to Poynter, the Obama Administration has been aggressive in pursuing leaks, prosecuting twice as many cases under the WWI-era Espionage Act as all prior administrations.
Known for gnawing at complex questions like a terrier with a bone. Digital evangelist, writer, teacher. Transplanted Southerner; teach newbies to ride motorcycles. @kegill (Twitter and Mastodon.social); wiredpen.com