Second Try At A Shield Law Echoes The First

[struggle4progress]

By North Country Gazette On June 6, 2013

INSIDE THE FIRST AMENDMENT

By Gene Policinski

... A long-standing goal of many journalism organizations for years, an earlier version of a shield law gained U.S. House approval in 2009. But it died the next year in the Senate, in large degree because of the then-breaking controversy surrounding Manning and his leaking of hundreds of thousands of secret military reports and diplomatic cables to the online organization Wikileaks.

Just as this latest attempt at the shield law gathers steam, along comes Manning and Wikileaks again. Just a few miles from the Capitol, in a military courtroom at Ft. Meade, Md., Manning faces court-martial proceedings about the Wikileaks disclosure. Prosecutors say classified information from that unprecedented disclosure then went from Wikileaks to Osama Bin Laden and others, endangered American lives and harmed relations with U.S. allies ...

Currently, two potential definitions are on the table: In the Senate bill, gathering information to distribute it to the public is all that’s required – which might or might not include Wikileaks. In the House version, there is an added condition: Newsgathering must be done “for financial gain or livelihood.” Wikileaks is funded by contributions for its work, but is that the kind of income the bill’s sponsors have in mind? And then there are bloggers and student journalists, many of whom neither work for commercial enterprises or are paid for their work. Would they be included or excluded by the proposed shield laws.

Both House and Senate versions exclude for “agents of a foreign power.” As Washington Post national security write Walter Pincus noted in a recent column, such a definition would exclude journalists working for organizations tied to terrorist groups, but might it also exclude “… the BBC, Agence France-Presse and some Russian government-owned services?” ...

http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2013/06/06/second_try/

[sigmasix]

1. without fairness this shield will assist partisan attacks

Without a fairness doctrine or some real FCC regulations, American "journalism" will remain a partisan rage creator and deny thier duty to America by trivialization of the agrieved state of the relationship beween the electorate and thier representitives.
I keep seeing "the sky is falling" sorts of exclamations about these mostly invented "scandals" about the government doing it's job.
After 6 years of vulture attack media and the continued capital strike by treasonous "job creators", why would anyone believe one word about this president and his administration from Fox "News" and it's MSM echoechambers.

Give us some journalists, interested in facts and context and subject to a fairness doctrine...
and I'll be more than willing to talk about the special rights and priviledges a functioning democracy owes to journalism. The individuals we refer to as real journalist are no longer doing the job; America is coming apart at the seams and our so called "News" is doing nothing to stop it by telling americans who the bad guys are. News died with Rupert Murdock's american citizenship and colin powell's son's destroyed the FCC for a hansome cash payment and dream job working toward complete monopoly of media ownership.
Show us a real journalist that understands the notion of following the data and drawing a conclusion, based the data, not what the media owner wants it to be.
From what I can tell, all of the major "news' outlets are owned by 5 owners. 5 owners that do not want journalists reporting the truth about thier monied friends. why is there no news media push for uncovering the acts of destruction and theft of US cohesion being conducted in the capitol.