Brief 5 - Reporter's Privilege

Journalists have a responsibility to tell the truth to society. And in this responsibility are certain protections: Shield Laws are laws that protect a Journalist from revealing their sources when ordered by a court. America values free speech so much that it has protections for those who want the truth to get out without being accountable to a judge. Most states have Shield Laws in order to protect their journalists. Now in 2015, the house of representatives passed legislation blocking federal prosecutors from forcing journalists to testify. However, usnews.com writes that it could have negative effects.

How could shielding anonymous sources be bad? Well, one of the main issues lawmakers have is that it doesn't give any process to defining who is a journalist and who is not. It could be argued that whoever identifies themselves as a journalist can give themselves immunity from testifying. Certainly, nowadays we do see a more decentralized form of journalism, with the advent of cell phone cameras and glorified bloggers, it's hard to tell who is a "real" journalist.

This definition between which journalists are "real" and which are "fake" is a growing topic. There has been a recent hubbub about "fake news." Now, depending on who you ask, fake news can be anything from breitbart, to fox news, to cnn. Everyone with a political opinion is calling opposition-leaning news sites fake, with President Trump actually calling a CNN reporter "Fake news" to his face, live on tv (later, the President redacted this statement, later calling CNN "Very Fake News.") So the question is, does a reporter accused of being "fake news" have the same reporter's privilege?

To answer this question, we only need to look at Wikileaks. When the term "Fake News" blew up shortly after the election, Wikileaks was one of the news sites accused of being "Fake News" in that they allegedly echoed Russian propaganda. The Washington Post writes 

"The tactics [of "fake news" acting as Russian Propoganda] included penetrating the computers of election officials in several states and releasing troves of hacked emails that embarrassed Clinton in the final months of her campaign."

While Julian Assange, editor in chief of Wikileaks, does not have to reveal his source when it comes to the leaked emails between Hillary and her campaign manager, John Podesta. In his case, I doubt it matters whether or not he is ordered to, as he is currently awaiting extradition to Sweden and the U.S. for other matters. But he did specifically say that it was not Russia that leaked the emails to Wikileaks.

But reporter's privilege is not just Wikileaks' shield in the fight for legitimacy. It is used by organizations that are attacking Wikileaks. Propornot.com lists Wikileaks on their "list" of publications that echo Russian propganda. Propornot was used as a primary source for other news sites accusin

g President Trump of benefiting from Russian Propaganda, and indeed they use Reporter's Privilege to protect themselves.

"We are anonymous for now, because we are civilian Davids taking on a state-backed adversary Goliath, and we take things like the international Russian intimidation of journalists, “Pizzagate”-style mob harassment, and the assassination of Jo Cox very seriously, but we can in some cases provide background information about ourselves on a confidential basis to professional journalists. We do not publicly describe all of our sources and methods, although we describe most of them, and again, we can in some cases provide much more detail to journalists and other researchers in order to contextualize their reporting."

No matter how dirty the journalistic mudslinging gets, in the war for public opinion, reporters will continue to use Shield Laws and online anonymity to protect themselves.