Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Information act is for the public's protection
From the RoundTable blog
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Rick Boucher
Boucher, a Democrat, represents Virginia's 9th District in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Thomas Jefferson once said, "Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and it cannot be limited without being lost." Freedom of the press is a cornerstone of our democracy, and our Founding Fathers understood that an informed citizenry is essential to keeping the government accountable to its people and in promoting honest and ethical conduct in our society.
The U.S. House of Representatives has approved, by a vote of 39821, the Free Flow of Information Act, legislation I authored that would create a federal media shield law to protect reporters from being compelled to reveal their confidential news sources in federal court proceedings. Its passage is a major victory for the public's right to know and for the ability of reporters to bring important information to light.
Journalists play an essential role in informing our society. They not only report news and information to the public, but serve as watchdogs, investigating and exposing what are often illegal, unethical or dangerous activities by both public- and private-sector actors. To do that job effectively, journalists sometimes must rely on sources who do not want their identities revealed for fear of personal safety, retaliation by employers, ostracism by friends and neighbors, or extreme embarrassment.
Imagine a single mother who works at a factory to support her family. Imagine she knows there is a flaw in the product being made that could put the lives of those who use it at risk. A reporter who has heard about possible problems at the plant seeks to interview her for a story that, by exposing the situation, has the potential to save lives. Without a guarantee of confidentiality, the woman is unlikely to risk her job by speaking with the reporter, and lives will continue to be endangered. Public safety suffers.
Because of scenarios like this, 34 states and the District of Columbia have laws that protect reporters from the compelled disclosure in state court proceedings of confidential sources of information. Such broad support for assuring the confidentiality of journalists' sources at the state level lays bare the glaring lack of similar protections at the federal level.
During the past several years, more than 30 reporters have been subpoenaed or questioned in federal court proceedings about confidential sources. Federal prosecutors are increasingly attempting to force journalists to reveal their sources rather than finding wrongdoers through their own investigations into reported activities. Prosecutors have used the threat of jail to pressure reporters into violating promises of confidentiality they made to sources as a condition of receiving information at the core of their stories and at the core of criminal investigations.
In some instances, reporters have been jailed for keeping their promises not to identify sources. These actions inevitably have a chilling effect on the willingness of reporters to rely on confidential sources and the willingness of sources to speak with reporters. Action is needed to protect the promise of confidentiality between reporters and their sources from this unprecedented series of federal government challenges.
The public's right to know hangs in the balance because if the identity of sources is not protected, many matters of public importance will not become known. Public corruption and corporate misdeeds will go uncorrected. In many instances, information that first alerts federal prosecutors to potentially illegal activity or alerts civil litigants to the facts giving rise to a private civil case is contained in a news story that could have been reported only upon assurance of anonymity to a source.
The passage of the Free Flow of Information Act helps to ensure that journalists can continue to exercise the freedom of the press to bring information of broad public interest to light. It sets strict limits on the ability of the U.S. Department of Justice or a private party to compel the disclosure of confidential sources in federal court proceedings. It carefully balances the public interest in the free flow of information against the public interest in compelling testimony in highly limited circumstances involving grave risk to national security or imminent threats of bodily harm.
By protecting reporters and their confidential sources, the act will encourage whistleblowers to talk to journalists and expose wrongdoing. As Jefferson recognized, our liberty and our democracy depend on a free and fully functioning press. The overwhelming support the bill received in the House is evidence of its importance in underpinning this nation's tradition of honoring press freedom as a hallmark of our open and informed society.
