Congress is considering legislation that would create a federal media shield. It will offer protection of confidential sources for anyone who "publishes a newspaper, book, magazine, or other periodical in print or electronic word." According to a News.com report on a Sentate hearing on the bill yesterday, Cornell University law professor Steven Clymer, said that he thought the current wording of the bill would cover bloggers, but that he viewed this as a "dangerously broad" move that would undermine the idea of granting privileges at all. Sen. John Cornyn said in his prepared statement for the hearing, The relative anonymity afforded to bloggers, coupled with a lack of accountability, as they are not your typical brick-and-mortar reporters who answer to an editor or publisher, also has the risk of creating a certain irresponsibility when it comes to accurately reporting information."
Judith Miller testified that I'm here because I hope you will agree that an uncoerced, uncoercable press, though at times irritating, is vital to the perpetuation of the freedom and democracy we so often take for granted." In my opinion, it's journalists like Judith Miller who collaborate with the government under the guise of security clearances who shouldn't be covered by the media privilege, not not journalists who publish using blogging tools.
According to her own tale told in the NYT on Sunday, she received a security clearance from the Department of Defense as part of her embedded coverage of the war in Iraq. How come more journalists (and others) are not outraged about that! (some who are: Pressthink, Poynter Online Forum, Sisyphean Musings, Josh Marshall, who points to this piece from Frank Foer's piece in New York magazine from the summer of 2004 about Miller's embedding contract.
A journalist with a contractual relationship with the government not to report some things that she learns directly fom them. Decisions about what to publish not made by consultations with editors, but under the watchful eyes of the government-- Is that journalism?
Whether through legislation, interpretation, agency action, court cases, etc., these days lots of us are in the business of trying to determine what a 'journalist' is. Can't we agree that one of the requrements is that it is someone who reports on what they learn first hand or from sources they've developed, not people who are told stuff by the government and sign an agreement only to disclose what the government chooses? In whose interest was Miller acting? What is her duty to the public in terms of how she learns information and what she chooses to report?
I support allowing journalists the discretion to determine when they should report something because of their obligation to disclose, and when not to report something-- like in the case of troop movements-- where some other duty may trump the obligation to disclose. I do not support journalists contracting away that discretion to government agents to decide what should or should not be disclosed.
I've had personal experience with this. I received a security clearance to participate in the Department of Homeland Security’s SecureFlight Security and Privacy Working Group. It's been extremely difficult to determine what I can not talk about, because I learned it from the government, and what I can talk about, because I learned it independently elsewhere. I've been conservative to avoid an inadvertent disclosure. Do we want journalists to be conservative, especially when the clearance prevents them from making these decisions collaboratively with their editors?
At the hearing, Cornyn called for "serious discussion of what constitutes the term 'reporter.'" And I agree. But before ruling out any publication using blogging tools, I ask that we consider standards that ask
1. what is the purpose of the news collecting and promise of confidentiality and
2. was the reporter fulfilling their duty to the public
or-- the Standard we proposed in the Apple case--
3. Was the intent of the journalist to distribute information to the public and was that her intent at the time the promise to the confidential source was made.
With regard to her reporting about Iraq, Miller fails all three tests.
UPDATE: This article says that this arrangement was not limited to Miller.
Some Pentagon officials and journalists questioned whether her arrangement was actually what many journalists covering the Iraq war had: a written agreement to see and hear classified information but treat it as off the record unless an ad hoc arrangement was reached with military hosts.
In a telephone interview Wednesday, Ms. Miller said this so-called nondisclosure form was precisely what she had signed, with some modifications, adding that what she had meant to say in her published account was that she had had temporary access to classified information under rules set by her unit.
Ms. Miller said that under the conditions set by the commander of the unit, Col. Richard R. McPhee, she had been allowed to discuss her most secret reporting with only the senior-most editors of The Times, who at the time were Howell Raines, the executive editor, and Gerald M. Boyd, the managing editor.
This really doesn't make me feel any better... I've been uncomfortable about the whole notion of embedded reporters and this appears to be one more reason to question whether embedding changes the nature of the relationship between reporter and subject to a too collaborative one.