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Obama Administration: Shield Law Should Only Protect Journalists If We Don't Care About The Story
We already found it quite troubling that the Senate committee, working on a federal "shield law" that would help protect journalists from having to reveal their sources, switched from language that was pretty inclusive, to a bill that would greatly limit the definition of a journalist to only those who work for big time journalistic endeavors. Lots of smaller, independent or amateur journalists would get no protection at all. ...

...Either way, it might not matter at all. Apparently, even after all this, the Obama administration is asking for more concessions, such as not allowing any shield protection on any instance where the administration declares that the matter involves "significant" harm to national security. Now, you can understand why the administration would want that, but there's absolutely no oversight. Basically, under the administration's proposal, if the administration simply said there was such harm, the judge would immediately wipe out the shield. ...