Many folks are wringing their hands over the Plame case. The question which rests before courts is: should a special protection in the 1st Amendment exist protecting the confidentiality of journalistic sources?
Bob says -- why are these sources protected? One reason used to be that journalism was extremely special. Not everyone had a newspaper, with a million readers, which served as a platform for dissemination of the bleaching sunlight of truth. If this protection hadn't existed in the 1960's, the Pentagon papers would never have been published, and Americans would never have known what a mess the Administrations had descended us into.
However, in the age of the internet, blogs, and widespread publication -- **anyone** can disseminate information widely. Newspapers act only as particularly popular information gathering squares. The thinking used to be, threaten the protections, and those few gathering squares would close, and there would be no more recourse for those wishing to out egregious violations of the public trust. However, the gathering squares are no longer few.
Is there any good reason remaining to protect journalistic sources with special rights? In fact, yes, there is. It just may be that the violation of the secrecy law -- in this case, a felonious revelation of secret information critical to the national defense -- serves a public good. In the same way there is a "self-defense" protection for violence, there should be an exception for protection of those confidential sources when their revelations of secret information serve a public good.
After a half-century in which newspapers have enjoyed broad protections for their confidential sources, that protection should be maintained, but only when newspapers can argue that the revelation of the information served a public good. If no public good is served -- and it's probable, but not certain, in the Plame case that no public good was served by outing her CIA connection -- the courts should recognize no protection for the sources.
Besides, who doesn't want to see Robert Novak sporting thumb-screws?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment