What is to stop any country from impinging on the journalistic right to protecting sources? What will prevent Russia and China or Iran from indicting American journalists for information. Cutting deeper into the right to protect sources is removing a vital right to the journalist's practice. Journalism is a profession, no different than the law and in many ways needs the same professional standard as lawyers.
August 19, 2016
By NYT Editorial Board
...The legal questions (click here) raised in Mr. Bonie’s case have received less attention. But that case represents a more imminent threat to freedom of the press. In that proceeding, a Manhattan appeals court backed a trial judge who ordered a reporter for News 12 the Bronx, a cable channel, to turn over unaired segments of an interview with Mr. Bonie. Unless that decision is overturned by the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, prosecutors will have greater authority to compel journalists to produce information gathered during the reporting process that was not published or broadcast.
That would put a dent in New York’s shield law for journalists, one of the strongest in the nation. It would have a chilling effect on news gathering, by routinely burdening journalists with subpoena requests. And it could create the damaging perception that news organizations are an investigative arm of the criminal justice system....
The American journalist is invaluable in providing the truth and chronically speaks truth to power. Let us not forget the US Senate pays attention to the number of Pinocchios awarded the false face of politics.
More importantly, journalism is the one place where information and the people interface. It is extremely important. The fact a journalist can be tapped as if a spy weakens the profession and removes the 'best truth' from access to the public.
Let us not forget "the source" takes on great risk and inevitably will suffer when discovered even under the best Whistleblower laws. A sources right to speak without infringement is important.
The USA has made remarkable gains in public awareness through journalists and their practice; it should not be tampered with.
Forgotten from our memories are the journalists wrongly charged and imprisoned in Egypt.
August 17, 2016
By Bill Kaufman
...Fahmy, (click here) who was imprisoned for 438 days in Egypt on trumped-up terrorism charges while a reporter for Al Jazeera English, said his experience led him to draft a charter that would ensure Ottawa to aid journalists detained abroad.
“We wrote up a protection charter partnering with Amnesty International and one of the main points was the need for a new law obligating the government to help journalists imprisoned,” Fahmy, 42, told a Globalfest Human Rights Forum audience.
“I’m hoping the government will respond.”...
The USA sets the standard. Journalists globally know what a dream come true "Freedom of the Press," is cherished. For journalists in the USA and abroad the highest professional standard should be allowed their discretion, except, perhaps when they hack into a person's mobile phone.
The need for confidential sources is a long lived necessity for newspapers and their journalists. Today, there is a far greater danger and that is the invasiveness of computer hacking of electronic media.
These court cases are minor compared to the larger need for protecting sources. I am sure the judges involved have not yet explored other methods of truth telling like asking to have detectives placed on their need to know. The law is best when it works without getting lazy. If a journalist has information, it is easy to demand their cooperation. That is not professionalism of the court, it is the laziness of law enforcement.
