Free Flow of Information Act of 2007

On May 2, 2007, a bipartisan team of Congressman introduced the Free Flow Of Information Act. Representatives Mike Pence (R-Ind.) and Rick Boucher (D-Va.) have brought forth the bill in the House, while Senators Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and Christopher Dodd (D-Ct.) introduced the same bill in the Senate.

While 33 states and the District of Columbia have already enacted legislation protecting journalistic privileges, this would be the first federal media shield law. Similar bills have been introduced to Congress in recent years but have never made it out of committee hearings. However, recent developments such as the Valerie Plame Affair and the record setting imprisonment of blogger Josh Wolf have raised the political profile of the shield law issue.

Perhaps what is most interesting about such a law is that, in order to confer protections to journalists, the bill has to come to terms with a legal definition of what journalism is and who can be considered to be a journalist.

The language in the bill cites protections for "covered persons," defined in the bill as: "a person engaged in journalism and includes a supervisor, employer, parent, subsidiary or affiliate of such covered person." The FFIA goes on to define journalism as "the gathering, preparing, collecting, photographing, recording, writing, editing, reporting, or publishing of news or information that concerns local, national, or international events or other matters of public interest for dissemination to the public." Distinguished from earlier attempts to create a federal shield law, the new incrnation of the FFIA now shifts the definition of journalism away from an individual's association with a formal news organization to the actual practice of news gathering and dissemination.

As defined, the new law would confer protections to New York Times reporters and bloggers alike. While Boucher told CNET news that they are "not attempting to extend this privilege to everyone in our society," he did explain that the law's "intent is that bloggers who are regularly involved in newsgathering and reporting, within the scope of that definition, would be entitled to the privilege."

The CNET article goes on to indicate measured support from Christine Tatum, President of the Society of Professional Journalists who said that while she would like to see the protections in the bill be as far reaching as possible, she qualifies her support for journalistic privileges with the comment that "if everybody's a journalist, nobody's a journalist."

The establishment of a truly bipartisan coalition introducing the bill and the presence of broad based support from heavyweight media organizations such as the SPJ, the Newspaper Association of America, the National Association of Broadcasters, the Reporter's Committee for Freedom of the Press, and the Ameircan Society of Newspaper Editors promises that the new version of the FFIA will be more successful this go-round.