Say Anything Blog

This is spot-on:

WASHINGTON - The No. 2 official at the Justice Department said Wednesday that a shield law for reporters would encourage leaks of classified information.

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty also said the proposal to protect reporters from having to identify their sources would "significantly weaken" the department's ability to obtain information it needs to protect national security.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., rejected McNulty's opposition, saying he wants to push forward with the bill, inspired in part by last year's jailing of journalist Judith Miller, then of The New York Times.

Miller had refused to cooperate with prosecutors in the Valerie Plame leak investigation. She subsequently disclosed that the source who told her of Plame's CIA identity had been Vice President Dick Cheney's now-indicted former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby.

I think we can all agree that there are certain things - particularly related to national security - which are appropriate for our government to keep secret. I think we can also agree that one of the things we elect leaders to do is decide what sort of information should be made public to citizens and what shouldn't be.

A shield law protecting reporters from ever having to reveal the identity of government officials who leak sensitive information to them would take the power of deciding what government information gets made public out of the hands of our elected leaders and put it in the hands of un-elected, agenda-driven media reporters.

Is that something we want? I don't think so. Our politicians are elected to serve the best interests of their constituents and the best interests of this country in general. Reporters are not. Reporters are hired to write stories that will bring their respective publications/shows lots and lots of readers/viewers. Now I'll grant that politicians don't always act with the nation's best interests at heart, but at least they're supposed to.

If we allow journalists to publish leaks while being able to protect their sources in an absolute fashion we'll never be able to hold anyone accountable for these leaks. We'll never be able to charge anyone for the leaks if we can't find out who they are, nor will citizens know who not to vote for. And we certainly can't expect journalists to hold themselves accountable. In the journalism world printing information you received from an illegal leak is something you get awards for.

I'm not against government transparency or even whistle-blowers in general, but I'm certainly not in favor of granting journalists absolute power to publish any leaked information they want with zero consequences.