Opinion: A shield law for journalists might seem like a good idea, but it isn’t — it’s actually a terrible idea

GigaOM's Mathew Ingram argues that the federal shield law for journalists pending in the U.S. Senate is a bad idea because it would "allow the government to define who gets to be a journalist and who doesn’t." Ingram further argues, even though senators tried to draw a line between freelance journalists and Wikileaks, the leaker web organization "is clearly a media entity — a key part of what Harvard law professor Yochai Benkler has called the 'networked fourth estate.'"