PD Editorial: More reasons to protect journalists and their sources

The Trump administration's seizure of messages and records from a New York Times reporter's personal email accounts and phone number is fresh evidence of the need for a federal shield law to protect reporters from unconstitutional government intrusion.

Shield laws, which exist in 49 states but not federally, allow journalists to keep their sources confidential, preventing courts or government officials from compelling their release. They help codify the First Amendment guarantee of a free press.

The need became clear again in a recent case. Federal prosecutors investigating whether James Wolfe, a senior Senate Intelligence Committee aide, was leaking information to the press, seized years' worth of email and phone records from New York Times reporter Ali Watkins. The seized emails dated back to Watkins' time in college.

Prosecutors were interested in Watkins because she was in a relationship with Wolfe for three years and had written stories while a reporter at Politico about the Senate Intelligence Committee. She told her New York Times editors that Wolfe did not provide her with information while they seeing one another. She had informed them of the relationship prior to starting work with the newspaper.

An odd side-note to this story involves a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent who questioned Watkins about her sources and, disturbingly, had detailed information about her overseas travels. That agent was not part of the FBI's investigation into Wolfe and is now under investigation himself.

The seizure of Watkins' records alarmed press groups. The Committee to Protect Journalists called it a “dangerous precedent” and “a fundamental threat to press freedom.”

This is simply the most recent in a long line of incidents proving the need for a shield law. Bills creating shield laws always generate bipartisan support, but so far have not gained enough momentum to pass.

When Attorney General Jeff Sessions declined to say during his confirmation hearings that the Justice Department wouldn't prosecute journalists for doing their jobs, a bipartisan bill was introduced in the House of Representatives, but it never progressed.

The bill would have created a statutory privilege preventing journalists from being compelled to reveal confidential sources. It had narrow national security and public interest exceptions to prevent abuse.

“The First Amendment provides for a free press, but that guarantee means nothing if reporters cannot protect whistle-blowers and confidential sources, or if reporters have to live in fear of prosecution or jail time,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Maryland, when he and Rep. Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, introduced the bill.

President Barrack Obama earned criticism during his time in office for his administration's pursuit of a record-setting number of leak-related prosecutions, especially after it came out that the FBI subpoenaed records for Fox News and Associated Press reporters. Sessions boasted last year that the Trump administration has tripled the number of such investigations.

In real-world reporting, journalists must sometimes promise confidentiality to whistle-blowers willing to talk about what is happening in our government. If journalists can be forced to give up the names of confidential sources, those whistle-blowers might clam up, costing the public access to vital information that they need to hold elected officials accountable.

You can send a letter to the editor at letters@pressdemocrat.com