Forlorn Prospects for Federal Shield Law for Journalists

The likelihood is very low that the U.S. Senate will take up a law that would provide a federal evidentiary privilege to journalists against revealing their sources, writes Rem Rieder in USA Today. While the Senate Judiciary Committee passed the bill and the House of Representatives also has passed a bill with a shield for journalists, the Senate is not likely to spend a week debating an evidentiary privilege for reporters during its lame-duck session starting November 12, Rieder further writes. "So the shield law, like immigration reform and gun control, looms as yet another casualty of the gridlock that has paralyzed Capitol Hill and turned Congress into a wildly dysfunctional and widely loathed travesty," Rieder concludes.