Last May, Connecticut passed a reporter’s shield law, and the law came into effect on October 1st. There are now over thirty states with shield laws in effect and Massachusetts is currently working on a shield law.

At the New England News Forum conference on Saturday, shield laws were a hot topic. The panel, “Does journalism--or blogging--merit a shield?” explored this is detail. Jeffrey Newman, a lawyer at Prince Lobel Glovsky and Tye has been leading the charge to bring shield laws to Massachusetts and moderated the session.

Jim Taricani described his experiences of being found in civil contempt, and later criminal contempt for not revealing who provided him with a tape that was aired tied to the “Operation Plunder Dome probe”. A judge had ordered that the tape not be shown, yet the tape was shown on the NBC affiliate in Rhode Island. Initially, Taricani was fined $1000/day for civil contempt, which NBC covered on his behalf. Later, he was found in criminal contempt and sentenced to six months home confinement.

It is worth noting that the day after Taricani was convicted, Sen. Dodd from Connecticut proposed a federal shield law for reporters.

Sarah Olsen spoke about the U.S. Army subpoenaing her to testify about her article concerning Lieutenant Ehren Watada. Lt. Watada had spoken with the press about why he was publicly refusing deployment and was charged with conduct unbecoming an officer for speaking with the press. Olsen refused to cooperate with any prosecution that would impede a soldier’s freedom of speech. She also spoke about Josh Wolf who has recently been released from prison after refusing to testify before a grand jury about tapes that he had shot as an independent videographer.

Not everyone was a supporter of shield laws. Bill Ketter, editor of the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune spoke up against shield laws, arguing that he didn’t want laws that give an opening to not upholding the first amendment. He sited a recent case where a reporter for the Mankato Free Press in Minnesota was ordered to give up notes about a phone call made during a police standoff. Minnesota has a shield law, which had been very strong and would have protected the reporter. However, the legislature subsequently softened the shield law to a point where the judge asserted the revised law does not protect the reporter.

One of the big issues these days is, to whom should shield laws apply? The purest would argue that they apply to everyone. In Connecticut the law applies to people working with (as defined by a long string of legalese) the “news media”, also defined by some long string of legalese. Robert J. Ambrogi, a Massachusetts lawyer and journalist writes,

It is not clear whether this definition would include bloggers. At first glance, it would appear to exclude bloggers who are not working for a media organization, but perhaps one could argue that a blog is a "periodical" or "other transmission system" and therefore covered.

The proposed Massachusetts law defines a covered person as follows:

"Covered person", a person who engages in the gathering of news information and has the intent, at the beginning of the process of gathering news or information, to disseminate such news or information to the public.

This is a fairly broad definition that would appear to cover much of blogging.

While we can argue about the best ways to protect the Freedom of the Press, it does seem clear that, as one speaker put it, “for every story that doesn’t get told, it is the public that loses”.

(Cross posted at Media Channel.)