Information flow

The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday passed the first federal shield law for journalists.

The margin of victory — 398-21 — is large enough to override a threatened White House veto.

The Free Flow of Information Act would bar prosecutors from forcing reporters to disclose the names of anonymous sources, though there are exceptions. Reporters could still be jailed for contempt if they failed to testify under subpoena in cases where their testimony could prevent serious injury or death, or if they witnessed illegal activity. The government could also compel testimony from journalists if it can convince the courts it’s a matter of national security.

The District of Columbia and 33 states — including Nevada — currently have similar laws. “That protection is lacking at the federal level,” explains House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

The White House argues the bill would “produce immediate harm to national security and law enforcement” and would create an “unreasonable and unjustified evidentiary burden for prosecutors.”

But in the real world, the recent cases in which prosecutors have been willing to jail authors or reporters for refusing to testify have not involved sole-source journalists protecting the identities of terrorists or other criminals who have thus been allowed to go about their nefarious business with impunity.

Far from it.

Instead, prosecutors frequently call in reporters to ask them about matters of which their own investigators are already fully aware. A prime example is the recent federal prosecution of vice presidential Chief of Staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby. Prosecutors already knew who told what to whom. In fact, they’d already determined no crime was committed in revealing that Valerie Plame was a CIA operative. So why was Mr. Libby still grilled? Why did New York Times reporter Judith Miller spend 85 days in jail for refusing to name sources of information when the government already knew there’d been no crime?

Because the real goal was not to discover who had committed any crime. The real goal was political punishment for the supposed “crime” of talking to the press.

Without the willingness of reporters to protect their sources, we might never have read about conditions at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center; prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib; even the White House’s involvement in that little burglary at the Watergate.

Over the past several years, more than 40 reporters and media organizations have been subpoenaed to reveal their sources, have faced demands for their notes and photos or otherwise become the targets of prosecutors or civil attorneys trying for the most part to bolster existing cases.

The opposition to this law has little to do with police or prosecutors who can locate bad guys only by peering over a reporter’s shoulder. It has a lot to do with a recurring desire to chill the ardor of whistle-blowers to “spill the beans” over government corruption and wrongdoing by letting them know any reporter they talk to can be thrown in the clink till he or she gives up that source’s name.

A similar bill has passed the Senate Judiciary Committee and is awaiting a final vote in the Senate.

This is not a bill primarily about reporters’ privileges or convenience. This bill — well-named, for a change — is primarily about how much the public will get to learn about matters that our hulking government agencies would rather keep quiet.