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.