Newspapers Cut Wikileaks Out of Shield Law 602
An anonymous reader writes "The US press has been pushing for a (much needed) federal shield law, that would allow reporters to protect their sources. It's been something of a political struggle for a few years now, and things were getting close when Wikileaks suddenly got a bunch of attention for leaking all those Afghan war documents. Suddenly, the politicians involved started working on an amendment that would specifically carve out an exception for Wikileaks so that it would not be covered by such a shield law. And, now, The First Amendment Center is condemning the newspaper industry for throwing Wikileaks under the bus, as many in the industry are supporting this new amendment, and saying that Wikileaks doesn't deserve source protection because 'it's not journalism.'"
LOLWUT? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikileaks doesn't deserve source protection because 'it's not journalism.
Did the news industry forget what journalism is?
Re:LOLWUT? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes, a number of years ago.
Just shy of 9 years ago by my count.
Re:LOLWUT? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:LOLWUT? (Score:5, Informative)
Sure, he mixes a ton of tabloid "news" in with hard reporting, plus aggregates news from other sources, but we've seen that for decades too.
Drudge is only noteworthy because he showed that a small time nobody can defeat the incestuous world of maintstream reporting, where the cocktail circuit is more important than keeping an eye on the powerful and educating readers. He started the trend of watching the watchers to keep them honest by reporting the things they wanted to bury.
Re:LOLWUT? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't condemn Drudge at all! I congratulate him for putting "real" journalist's feet to the fire like Jon Stewart (oh the irony).
My point is: how exactly is he different than Wikileaks? That's my point! He was famous for headlining the Monica Lewinsky scandal -- exposing abuse at the expense of the American interest. He's as much a journalist as anything Wikileaks exposes! Likewise, my hope is that Wikileaks will become a prime bookmark (maybe not homepage) for journalists in the future but the QUANTITY of novel information they have provided is unprecedented. But the "real" journalists still use these antiquated guys as critical tools for their "journalism" to lead their stories. Not much of an investigative journalism budget for MSM now-a-days.
Again, non-wire, original journalism is NOT in the MSM. I think we can both agree on that, no matter what your views are (unless your the head of CNN/Fox/MSNBC)...
Really, I think everyone in the US can agree that the MSM is shit and we need to finance independment (non-corporate) media. I know the tea parties have my back on that. Liberals would probably agree on that as well!. They would just have to STRICTLY restrict corporate financing.
What would the world be like then?!
Re:LOLWUT? (Score:5, Informative)
All y'all obviously don't know the history of the news business. Vis. Randolph Hearst, or even more, the famous Tom Paine. The hypothesis of objective reporting has never been, and never will be, fact. ... :)
Except for what I write. That's all objective truth!
Re:LOLWUT? (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot longer than that, if you believe/read Chomsky. Challenging the wrong people is a career damaging move.
blowhard overexposure (Score:3, Interesting)
Chomsky belongs to the same group as Steve Jobs and Rush Limbaugh and RMS. These people are not as common as you make out. Reality distortion fields that work on some (or most) of the people all of the time are a rare achievement.
I was watching Chomsky debates on YouTube the other day. It's hard to figure out what he's actually doing in his debating tactic. He seems to be convinced that human agency is a st
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Corporate media is also very much opposed to state-run media (which is why Sky TV is trying to get the UK Government to kill off the BBC via death by a thousand cuts), so anything corporate media says about state-run media (or, indeed, vice versa) should be taken with vast quantities of sodium chloride. Those not familiar with "Max Headroom: 20 Minutes Into The Future" (the UK movie, not the US miniseries) are advised =strongly= to watch it repeatedly until they understand why profit-driven information deli
Re:LOLWUT? (Score:5, Insightful)
It started long before the careless war reporting. It started at least as far back as when they started posting press releases as stories, without any validation. Maybe when they started reiterating smear campaigns without checking the reasons why the smear started.
And the newspaper industry wonders why it's dying? Because anyone can mindlessly reiterate a press release.
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He's talking about the WTC bombing.
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Re:LOLWUT? (Score:5, Interesting)
A sports reporter tweeted on Monday (this week or last week, i'm getting this second hand) that a ballplayer's suspension would be 5 games instead of 4.
Numerous outlets picked it up and ran it as news.
Thing is, he made it up. Deliberately. To demonstrate how many news outlets do zero confirmatory investigation before running stories.
So what did his employer do?
Fired him.
I.e., it's going to get worse before it gets better.
Re:LOLWUT? (Score:5, Funny)
(this week or last week, i'm getting this second hand)
To demonstrate how many news outlets do zero confirmatory investigation
I see what you did there.
Re:LOLWUT? (Score:5, Informative)
It's true:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20100831/sp_yblog_upshot/washington-post-suspends-columnist-for-twitter-hoax [yahoo.com]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I find it amusing that this comment would get modded up without any sources or links being cited. Meaning, mods have done zero confirmatory investigation before "doing their job."
Not to say it didn't actually happen, just sayin'...
A mod of interesting does not imply truth. Its just interesting.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Meaning, mods have done zero confirmatory investigation before "doing their job."
You assume?
Or they could have done a quick Google search [google.com] beforehand. How do you know they didn’t?
Oh, and apparently he was suspended, not fired.
http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100901/znyt05/9013014&template=printpicart [heraldtribune.com]
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Loooong loooooooong time ago. I wouldn't say it's about W, it's much before that.
Re:LOLWUT? (Score:5, Insightful)
They didn't forget. They all chose to pretend that it means something else. And by their definition, Wikileaks is most definitely not journalism. Wikileaks has never mentioned Lady Gaga even once! On a similar note, I highly recommend this from The Onion: http://www.theonion.com/video/time-announces-new-version-of-magazine-aimed-at-ad,17950/ [theonion.com]
Re:LOLWUT? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:LOLWUT? (Score:4, Insightful)
Wikileaks isn't journalism because they don't do journalism. They have some guys doing opinion pieces, and that's about as close as it comes. They're largely just a repository for leaked documents. Being in possession of a leaked document doesn't make you a professional reporter.
Re:LOLWUT? (Score:5, Insightful)
Journalism is doing what your corporate sponsors tell you to say.
Keep the voters split and controllable by using hot point issues.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:LOLWUT? (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't control so much as they keep them balkanized.
The religious people historically worked on social justice issues-- but they are all divided over abortion and gay marriage.
The conservatives historically held the lid on prices-- but they are all divided over abortion, gay marriage, and drug legalization.
Every issue comes down to 50/50 decisions making it very easy for corporations to
a) drop a little dirt to kill a candidate they don't like.
b) drop a little money to support a candidate they do like.
Heck, the corporations *prepare* as high as 70% of the "news" articles for some main stream news shows these days.
They hand the pre-filmed, scripted article they made to the news show and the news show runs it without telling you it is really an advertisement.
The top 1% of the population is taking 10x the money it was 20 years ago and even poor people losing their houses are voting to "lower taxes" because they have been convinced they are blood brothers with the wealthy. It's crazy.
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the tag line on the site suggests this is a "nerd" site however, and fighting oppression with force certainly does matter.
however the REAL point of my argument that you obviously missed, busy doing whatever geeks do, was: THE MEDIA IS NOT IN CONTROL.
Re:LOLWUT? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Your eloquence does much to convince others of the true depth of your intellect.
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The parent poster is pretty much on target. Remember we were revolting against a government at the time and saw that civilians needed weapons to keep the government in line. Recall that jefferson thought we would have a mini revolution every couple generations.
However, I think we haved reached a point in weapon cost and technology where private individuals don't stand a chance, even in large masses.
Recall the apache helicopter footage- they were hitting people from a mile away. Apache's shooting "effecti
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Next bond election look at the bonds.
"Vote for getting this neato service from the government"
"Vote for more police"
"Vote for candy for children"
Sounds good- but voting for a bond automatically generates a tax obligation. they don't even have to have a vote to increase your taxes. Every bond you vote for increases your taxes for them.
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Its really time the US has a political revolution. We need to stop looking at democracy and a republic as the end but rather think of them as starting point
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True self-government cannot happen because of simply a demise of a previous power or by chaotic events, it can only happen by the gradual reduction in the role o
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if you look at pre anarchy and post anarchy Somalia you will see that the people there were much, much, much, much better off without the central authority.
In case anyone is wondering about the source for such a counter-intuitive claim, he's talking about Peter Leeson's paper Better Off Stateless: Somalia Before and After Government Collapse. [peterleeson.com]
On the flip side, some of Leeson's conclusions are in dispute. [cato-unbound.org]
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What's sad is that you think the answer to people who live in poor conditions is not to help them raise themselves out of those positions, but to vote for the hand puppet you approve of who will take from others to give to them. You're no better than those you criticize.
Re:LOLWUT? (Score:5, Insightful)
What's sad is that you think the answer to people who live in poor conditions is not to help them raise themselves out of those positions [...]
Help them how ? Education so they can gain the skills necessary to work ? Food and shelter so they don't need to steal to survive ? Medical care so they don't die young, be bankrupted by an unfortunate medical condition, or relegated to "crazy and homeless" by an easily treatable mental condition ?
Or just cut taxes (that they don't earn enough to pay anyway) ?
Re:LOLWUT? (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you really that idiotic? If you don't have the money to feed yourself, how do you "raise yourself"? Do you honestly believe your own success was entirely the result of you "pulling yourself up from the bootstraps"? Let's drop you in the middle of Somalia and see how far your hard work gets you.
Whenever someone says "take from others" they reveal themselves to be a selfish prick who can't wrap their head around the fact that they live within a system that allows them to succeed, and without help from that system poor people have no chance of succeeding.
Re:LOLWUT? (Score:5, Insightful)
Food stamps, higher minimum wage and unemployment "benefits" only serve to give to the poor that which was taken from people who actually planned ahead.
How do you "plan ahead" when you've never had the means to do so ?
Explain to me why the hell I should have to pay for Joe the Bum's food?
For when *you're* "Joe the Bum* because you were unlucky enough to be rendered bankrupt and homeless.
So because I bust my ass working, studied my ass off in college and actually had a sane financial plan I should be "punished" for that and Joe the Bum rewarded? I don't see the logic in that...
The logic is where you don't automatically assume anyone who isn't wealthy and successful is worthless and lazy.
Re:LOLWUT? (Score:5, Insightful)
The question is primarily, how do you not have the means? Seriously. Its pretty damn easy to find charities, jobs, etc. if you are willing and really, really need it.
Born addicted to crack. Never known anything except a mother who hates me and any one of hundred men who could (or couldn't) be daddy. Can't write, can barely read, and only string a sentence together thanks to Sesame Street. The nicest clothes I own are a ripped T-shirt and some dirty jeans. I smell because I can only bathe once every few days, I'm missing 1/4 of my teeth because I've never been to a dentist and my mum's been giving me coke since I was 5. I've got an undiagnosed case of dyslexia and I'm borderline schizophrenic.
How good do you think my chances of getting a job - any job - are ?
Yeah, living within your means might mean you can't afford to take that vacation to Cancun, [...]
You appear to be talking about born-and-raised middle-class folks living marginally beyond their means because they aspired a bit too high. The relevant topic of discussion is the poor and destitute. The folks living in alleys, not downgrading from a 5-bedroom home to a 3-bedroom apartment. People for whom a "vacation to Cancun" is a lifetime dream, not something they have to put off for 12 months.
[...] yeah, living within your means might mean your meals are ramen noodles and PB+J sandwiches.
Sorry, mum kicked me out on my 16th birthday so she could move to a 1 bedroom flat. Even if I wanted to move back in and watch her turn tricks all night, I couldn't.
Live within your means and that won't happen.
My means are barely enough to afford food and board, because arseholes like you think I'm lazy for spending 12 hours a day mopping floors and think I should only be paid $50 to do it. In the middle of New York City.
Yeah, there are a few people who just were simply unlucky, but that is very, very few and thats why private charities exist that don't steal money out of my paycheck.
Bullshit.
The number of people who *want* to live a bare existence - and don't kid yourself that welfare, or charity is anything more than a bare existence - is minscule. No-one is living the dream on welfare, despite what you might believe, and it sure as hell isn't the majority.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"Journalism" today (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"Journalism" today (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"Journalism" today (Score:5, Insightful)
and that's why the best news program on tv is a fucking comedy show, they don't hide it
Yes. It's also why, as an American myself, I get news about my own country from foreign sources. Generally Canada and the BBC, for the most part. "Freedom of the Press" has been re-interpreted to mean "we have the freedom to say whatever the FUCK we want and call it 'news' and you can't do a God damned thing about it, you sheep.'" And yes, it does piss me off that I get more reasoned, more accurate, more truthful information about my own country's political processes from news organizations in other nations. Yes, Mr. Murdoch, I'm talking about you, and those like you.
Might as well just rescind the Freedom of the Press clause in the First Amendment. Not sure it's doing much good nowadays anyway, and so far as I'm concerned if you're just going to get up on that soundstage, in front of those cameras, and lie to me, you don't deserve the protections that Amendment affords you.
Re:"Journalism" today (Score:5, Funny)
I though the entire Fox News channel was comedy too?
Re:"Journalism" today (Score:5, Insightful)
You left out a really important one... "Copy anything off a well-known blog."
This is what annoys me the most... They are claiming that Wikileaks doesn't deserve protection because it's not "journalism", and yet the mainstream press thinks journalism is "copy shit off the web with zero fact-checking". Just think about the woman who was fired because some blog re-cut her speech so she sounded racist. Did *anyone* check that before airing it? No.
It's so easy to prank the media it's not even funny. All you have to do is put some story onto a well-trafficked-blog and five minutes later CNN is reporting it as news. And then it's in the paper the next day. I'd be willing to be a good amount that at least 10% of the news you read/hear/see each day is false, or at least substantially incorrect because no checking is done, it's just a race to scoop the other guy for ratings/readership.
No wonder everyone believes Faux News/Glenn Beck. If you see it on TV, it must be true!
Re:LOLWUT? (Score:4, Insightful)
How is what Wikileaks journalism? TFW says - Journalism is the investigation and reporting of events, issues, and trends to a broad audience.
Wikileaks takes documents that are provided to them, often stolen and just throws them up on a website without investigation or reporting.
They edited the video of the Apache so it'd fit their worldview. They are less journalistic than Drudge or Fark.
Re:LOLWUT? (Score:4, Insightful)
Wikileaks takes documents that are provided to them, often stolen and just throws them up on a website without investigation or reporting.
They do verify that the documents they get are legit before publishing them.
They edited the video of the Apache so it'd fit their worldview.
So first you want investigation and reporting, and when they do it you complain that they didn't just throw the unedited material on their website? Way to go logic. And oh btw. the unedited video has been available the whole time.
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It was about 50x in 1970 (40 years ago) and is between 450 and 525x today (depending on your source).
Who is better for the economy - one person earning $13 million and spending $4 million or 260 people earning $13 million and spending $12 million?
The CEO's (and wealthy) are killing the economy by paying low wages or not hiring at all.
Ummmm....wikileaks is foreign (Score:5, Interesting)
What does American law have to do with Wikileaks?
Re:Ummmm....wikileaks is foreign (Score:5, Informative)
Welcome the very, very messed up world of journalism law in the early 21st Century. Tech advances, the law plays catch up.
Your reading list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libel_tourism [wikipedia.org]
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/08/26/speech-act-now-a-law-big-win-for-libel-reform/ [discovermagazine.com]
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:_V2BY9JufdkJ:immi.is/%3Fl%3Den%26p%3Dvision+immi.is&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a [googleusercontent.com]
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It applies if Wikileaks has either people in the US or equipment, or if anyone from it's org wants to step foot on US soil.
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What does American law have to do with Wikileaks?
I would imagine that being "foreign" may just mean a different kind of intervention becomes legitimate, which might be why Wikileaks resides in a bunker under a Swedish mountain
Re:Ummmm....wikileaks is foreign (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ummmm....wikileaks is foreign (Score:5, Informative)
US Politicians incorrectly believe that the US owns the entire internet.
Actually, there is an acknowledged problem that "American interests" (i.e., US-registered corporations) own and operate a large fraction of the world's international cables, and almost all of the intercontinental cables. So it's easy for the US government to think of at least the "Internet backbone" as US property.
The Internet might be a better place if this problem were fixed.
Of course, the corporate world is slowly becoming a truly international culture that is independent of mere governments, so maybe the problem is being fixed. Whether this is an improvement isn't clear.
Re:Ummmm....wikileaks is foreign (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ummmm....wikileaks is foreign (Score:4, Interesting)
Hell, even Australia is doing censorship and filtering
As an Australian I feel compelled to correct this.
Certainly politicians have tried to get a filter implemented. In fact there have been a series of them. It started with Kim Beazly [wikipedia.org] (leader of the opposition at the time, who first made it ALP Policy [libertus.net], the ALP being the mob who ran the country for the last 3 years), then we had Kevin Rudd [wikipedia.org] (Prime Minster), Stephen Conroy [wikipedia.org] (Communications Minister), Brian Harradine [wikipedia.org] (independent who held the balance of power in the Senate), and Steve Fielding [wikipedia.org] (who saw himself as Harradine's successor) all pushed very hard for it. They were aided and abetted some the local elites, such as Clive Hamilton [wikipedia.org] (a Professor of Public Ethics and Vice-Chancellor's of Charles Sturt University) churning out papers in support of the filter. It is a truly impressive list of heavy hitters.
Yet, they failed. Now the opposition has formally rejected the idea it looks dead and buried.
For me it was a painful period in Australia's political history. Every time the issue was brought up on a forum that allowed public comments, the comments ran at about 20 to 1 against the idea. Regardless this mob tried to ram it though for 3 electoral cycles. Had they succeeded you could have truly said Australia democracy was doing a lousy job of representing the people doing the voting.
But despite having their hands firm on the leavers of power and the public megaphones (no newspaper editorial outside of the tech industry strongly rejected the idea) they didn't succeed. I don't know whether this means Australia's hands are safer than the US's, as the US has a better constitution. But it certainly has given me a new found faith in Australian style democracy.
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Maybe what we need is to get get American law set up so that it protects local wikileaks servers that contain leaked docs from, say, Algeria or Iran or China or wherever, and deny extradition of wikileaks people to those countries. Meanwhile, we encourage those countries to set up similar laws that protect wikileaks servers in their domain from actions by the American government. Then we'd have the ideal situation, that every government could be proud of the job "our own" wikileaks subsidiary has done in
Journalism ain't what it used to be (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Journalism ain't what it used to be (Score:5, Informative)
On what planet? Here on earth journalism has always been about what will sell papers or garner eyeballs.
I mean seriously, the drek quoted above gets posted and moderated 'insightful' every time a story about the media posted - but it is not now and never has been true.
It's one of many continual laments (Score:5, Insightful)
People do not study their history well, they learn maybe about major events, not about how people actually lived, and so they repeat bullshit over and over. As such a lot of people tend to be Neverwases. They look back to the good old days, where crime was low, people respected their elders, the press was honest and life was grand. You know, a past that never was.
Yellow journalism has been the norm for a long time. There are publications that are better, and periods where things over all improve because of some inspiring people, but yellow journalism is the norm.
But people don't study their history so things are always "getting worse." The press is "worse" now than ever (even though there is more independent journalism), crime is "worse" (though is has been trending down for like 4 decades), kids are lazy, people are stupid, music is bad, etc, etc, etc. All shit that more or less every generation has said and it has always been bullshit.
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On what planet?
I am glad to see you approach journalism with skepticism, but the truth is somewhere in between (I hate that phrase).
There always have been journalists who were willing to take risks to bring important information to the public. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Seldes [wikipedia.org] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I.F._Stone [wikipedia.org] During the McCarthy days, there really were risks -- many people were blacklisted and unable to work, and quite a few were sent to jail for publishing unpopular ideas. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Den [wikipedia.org]
Re:Journalism ain't what it used to be (Score:5, Insightful)
Now it seems that to most of the industry, it's about finding out what trouble Lindsay Lohan will get into next.
Well, technically that is actually journalism. Just not very useful journalism. I think you're looking at the past through rose-colored glasses. There has always been yellow journalism, gossip rags, propaganda sheets, etc. It's not like all journalism in the past was a noble effort to advance the public interest.
Why... (Score:5, Insightful)
...do journalists need special bonus rights over and above the standard package?
What is the problem to which this is the solution?
Re:Why... (Score:5, Insightful)
Journalists are granted specific rights which others do not receive. For example, they have the right not to reveal the sources of their information. This is critical to their ability to report on sensitive issues where whistleblowers wish to remain anonymous. Other people can be forced to testify, so long as it isn't against themselves or their spouses, and be held in contempt of court if they refuse. There are other such rights, but I won't go through them all right now. The point is that this shield law is one such right.
Journalists also have additional responsibilities to go along with this. For example, a journalist is expected not to reveal information that is a threat to national security, they are required to protect the identities of minors, and so on. Regular people don't have such restrictions, either.
The logic here is that these are special privileges granted to journalists, and that bloggers and sites like wikileaks do not qualify for them. If everyone who puts up a post about what they had for lunch is suddenly a journalist, then everyone will have those privileges. But those privileges are not intended for everyone, and if everyone has them, they are going to get in the way. Then they are going to get taken away from everyone, including the real journalists.
Re:Why... (Score:5, Insightful)
If, on the other hand, the blogger chooses to blog about local political corruption, or the abuses they witness commited by local police, why should they not be accorded the same priveleges and held to the same responsibilities? What differentitates someone who investigates for The Daily Rag from someone who investigates and publishes on his personal blog? How is a newspaper (or Time Magazine, or the WSJ) fundamentally different from a collective of bloggers who have organized to publish information on abuse, corruption, or wartime errors? (I'm not saying that Wikileaks is any of these.)
Mod Parent Up. (Score:3, Insightful)
This.
Wikileaks is not journalism. It has its value, certainly. In some ways it's complimentary to traditional journalism; in other ways it's essentially supplanted or usurped roles held by traditional journalism. But it's not the same thing.
It has freedoms and advantages journalists don't; conversely, it's in our best interest as a society that journalists have some additional protections that the rest of us that aren't journalists don't need. Hell, dictionary.com publishes a lot of information/document
Re:Mod Parent Up. (Score:4, Insightful)
that doesn't mean that (insert name of person associated with political group or religious group that you dislike) won't create WhateverLeaks tomorrow and "leak" a bunch of bogus documents with the same freedoms.
And that would be unthinkably worse-than-a-war horrible because...?
LOL (Score:4, Funny)
Wouldn't it be nice if we had politicians who did what's right for once, rather than what's politically expedient?
Yeah, and I want a pet unicorn, too.
Bill of Attainder (Score:2)
Thin end of the wedge (Score:5, Insightful)
If these protections - like being able to film cops at demonstrations - apply only to "accredited journalists" (or whatever you want to call them) then how long will it be before onerous demands are required to gain accreditation?
I understand in some ways why they want to a closed shop and shut out bloggers and other herberts who they perceive as amateurs. But, so the proverb says, be careful what you ask for - you might just get it.
Re:Thin end of the wedge (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure how you reconcile "free press" with the notion of having to apply for a permit to be a member of the press? It's a little like having freedom of religion, but you have to go register to be a member of one of a group of "approved" churches.
There's precident (Score:4, Insightful)
In many jurisdictions you require a permit to own a gun. You require additional tax stamps to purchase certain kinds of guns as well in all jurisdictions. This has been ruled to be ok per the second amendment. Regulating isn't restricting according to the court.
Now perhaps you disagree, but then perhaps you disagree only in the case of speech. However you can see where this stuff starts sneaking in. When you start trying to do end runs around the Constitution in one area, it establishes precedent to do so in other areas.
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No actually it doesn't. It say "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." Now many would interpret that as separate statements. It is saying since a militia is necessary to a free state, the right to bare arms shall not be infringed. In fact when you read documents by the founding fathers and look at activities of the time, this is how it was interpreted. Normal citizens owned and kept standard military
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Except that there are plenty of examples where the rights in both the 1st and 2nd amendments are limited by laws passed by Congress and signed by the President and upheld by the Supreme Court.
But you have to understand what "abridge" means in this context. It means simply to modify by reduction, but to lessen. It's possible to put limits on a thing without reducing its power or value. In fact, it's possible to put limits on a thing that increase its power and value. The question is in who gets to define
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Assange broke the laws of Australia, where he is a citizen, when he released another country's secrets.
In any case, there is legal means for the information to be released, and he refused to request that. He could have kept asking people in the government to do it, until he ran out of people. At that point, he might have had a case for finding another way to release it. But since the law is clear that if the information is improperly classified it must be declassified, and since the law is clear on the p
Re:Thin end of the wedge (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Thin end of the wedge (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Thin end of the wedge (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a difference between saying that you only get the protection if you're somehow accredited (whether it be by the government or by a separate, professional body) and saying you can or cannot publish stories at all. (As with free speech, you can publish what you want, but you may face consequences for publishing things, like libelous or classified material.)
In the end, this would be a new protection that the constitution doesn't appear to already grant journalists, so it's hard to see that not extending it to everyone is necessarily unconstitutional.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a slippery slope. Do we extend the privileges of police officers to private security firms next? Should we also extend privileges to private debt collectors? I'd rather nobody gets special rights.
Sickening (Score:5, Insightful)
Ugh. (Score:4, Insightful)
This is unfuckingbelievable. The so-called journalists offering up Wikileaks as a sacrificial lamb should be ashamed of themselves.
This just in. (Score:2)
Which part is news? The fact that people, especially "people of business," tend to act in their self-interest, or that the leadership of gigantic news organizations are amoral "business" men and not idealistic journalists desperately fighting for the love of the first amendment?
It's all about control (Score:5, Insightful)
Our "friends" at the newspapers like it when they're allowed to keep information from the public and then publish it for the sensationalism. To have someone else horn in on their territory is not to be accepted. In the last 20 years I've seen the "news" business go from fact driven reports to "newstainment". I'd rather read the information that Wikileaks puts on their website and make my own decisions based on the FACTS. Wikileaks is more of a journalist trying to put out the information they get so that we aren't keep in the dark by politicians, TV news monkeys, and the "We'll do whatever our government tells us to do" newspapers.
Apologies for the rant; I just get a little P.O.ed when the big guys are trying to squish the little guys who are willing to show us what's really going on.
Teach the Newspapers a Lesson! (Score:3, Funny)
In an alternate historical timeline (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:In an alternate historical timeline (Score:4, Interesting)
Richard M. Nixon, after successfully driving to repeal the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, goes on to third and fourth presidential terms.
Thanks in no small part to Dr. Manhattan winning Vietnam for us.
No no no. (Score:3, Insightful)
The whole idea is flawed. There should be no special rights for journalists.
The code of ethics for the industry (Score:3, Interesting)
From now on, the Comics Code will apply to all accredited news outlets with the force of law. Everybody else will be ordered to shut up.
"Shield Law" IS special rights for certain people (Score:4, Insightful)
Sort of funny to see someone write about how the "shield law" is "much needed" and complain that it won't apply to everyone in the same paragraph. The whole point of a "shield law" is to provide special rights for a limited set of people.
For regular folks, if the cops have reason to believe that you know something about a crime, you'll get subpoenaed and required to testify, under penalty of perjury, potentially against your will. Journalists seem to think they ought to be exempt from the regular laws.
You can't give everyone an exemption or they'll claim they were "reporting" when they drunkenly bragged that they knew who killed Mr. Body. That's the problem with the shield law idea.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You have the right to a free press.
Where did it say you have the right to aid and abet crime to develop your stories?
You didn't. So you can be held in contempt, i.e., jailed while you refuse to reveal your accomplices/sources, for years, if the police think you got the story from a criminal.
In lieu of a shield law we have a mish-mash of case law that may or may not be rational across jurisdictions and may or may not cover a general set of cases that have not yet occurred.
Some people think this is a hole in
Re:"Shield Law" IS special rights for certain peop (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't give everyone an exemption
It would be almost like you had to give everyone a set of clearly enumerated rights, and that would take some kind of bill.
Journalists are cowards. (Score:3, Insightful)
Shame on the "journalists" for this. They obviously do not understand the principals they rely on.
Frankly (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikileaks doesn't deserve source protection because 'it's not journalism.'"
Considering what "journalism" has become, this is actually a compliment.
If wikileaks isn't journalism, (Score:5, Insightful)
Then we can certainly do without whatever *is* called "journalism".
Re: (Score:2)
Wikileaks doesn't deserve source protection because 'it's not journalism.'
Only because they have redefined what journalism is so almost all 'journalists' now work to increase page views/advert sales and so tend to publish whatever gossip their parent corporations or government tell them.
Clarified that for those that were unsure.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I show up as anonymous because of a site error I'm currently experiencing, not out of cowardice as the auto-naming system implies.
If you think that most US newspapers are doing a good job just look at those statistics about people thinking Obama is a Muslim.
I thought Wikileaks was pretty cool until it published names of Afgan informants which is certainly not cool for many reasons. SO...both groups are looking pretty crappy these days and it's hard to take a side.
Go ahead and shoot the messenger.
Re:Gutless Cowards (Score:4, Insightful)
Or, maybe they're not cowardly, they just don't believe in the same things that you do.