Senator Chuck Schumer of New York has introduced legislation known as the “Media Shield Law”. Breitbart’s Matthew Boyle explains:
Schumer’s proposal would exempt a “covered journalist” from subpoenas and other legal requirements to expose their confidential sources in leak investigations and other areas. Other lawmakers have proposed similar ideas in the past, but the effort gained new momentum after a series of revelations about controversial tactics the Justice Department was using to target journalists.
Sounds great, right? Why wouldn’t we want to shore up the First Amendment’s freedom of the press protections?
But not all is as it seems. Senator John Cornyn of Texas blows the lid off of what this legislation is really all about: protecting the traditional liberal media and licensing the free press at the expense of new media upstarts. Back to Boyle:
Cornyn says Schumer’s proposal is fatally flawed and may be an unworkable idea altogether.
“They want to pick and choose which journalists are covered,” the Texan Republican told Breitbart News. “In other words, if you’re a blogger they might not cover you, but if you work for the New York Times they might. Given the changes in the way we get information and the way we consume news, that really smacks to me in essence of government licensing who’s an official ‘journalist’ for the purposes of a shield law and who’s not. If there is one thing I can glean from the First Amendment, it is that government should not be in the business of licensing the news media.”
In practice, defining who is considered a “journalist” and protected under the law from having to disclose confidential sources is a thorny legal problem. On the one hand, the law’s drafters don’t want to provide blanket immunity to everyone. But anointing a government-approved class of scribes cuts against the nature of journalism, which almost by definition is frequently critical of the government.
“It’s totally inconsistent with the notion of a free press and the First Amendment,” Cornyn said.
In essence, Schumer’s bill says “If you like your First Amendment you can keep your First Amendment.” Of course, we all know what that means.
So there you have it. The establishment politicians want to protect the lapdog establishment media at the expense of everyone else’s constitutional rights to freedom of the press and freedom of speech. It doesn’t get much more devious than that, folks. But leave it to a Texan to uncover lay bare the truth. Let’s hope that even if Schumer’s bill passes the Senate, the House will have the moral fortitude to just say “no”.