On the agenda this morning for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee is the federal shield law, otherwise known as the Free Flow of Information Act of 2013. There will be a live webcast of the meeting at 10 a.m.: http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/hearing.cfm?id=6225bf1b82d2592b...
Some in the media community say that the bill needs to be amended drastically because it would only shield journalists working for institutional players for pay and not "bloggers, freelancers, and other non-salaried journalists" (which is amusing to me as I was a professional journalist until about three weeks ago and now am a lawyer writing/reporting as an unpaid blogger on the side). Others say, even though the bill is "vague, clumsy and poorly written," that the time is ripe for a federal shield law in a moment when investigative revelation after revelation is showing how much government surveillaince is occuring in the name of security: http://m.washingtonexaminer.com/congress-should-pass-the-federal-shield-...
When a shield law was up for consideration a couple of years ago, the legislation at the time was killed off because of the massive information leaks from WikiLeaks. Now, even though we are in the middle of another leaking controversy due to Edward Snowden, the legislation appears to be advancing because of the discomfort that has arisen out of the relevation of the monitoring the Associated Press and Fox News faced from the federal government: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/16/us/politics/under-fire-white-house-pus...
I'll be monitoring the meeting and write an update later on what I learn.
PS. Also on the agenda are the nominations of five federal judges and one United States Attorney.
Lawyer and Legal Journalist
