TomDispatch First Amendment? Press freedom? Don’t make me laugh. Not in the twenty-first-century version of the US of A. NY Times reporter James Risen is being forced by a U.S. Court of Appeals to testify – he says he’ll go to prison instead – in the “trial of a former Central Intelligence Agency official charged with providing him with classified information.” The grounds: “that the First Amendment does not protect reporters who receive unauthorized leaks from being forced to testify against the people suspected of leaking to them.” This is both a shocking decision and a reasonable gauge of the changing American world we live in. Tom Here’s what the dissenting judge in the decision wrote: “Judge Roger Gregory, the third member of the panel, filed a vigorous dissent, portraying his colleagues’ decision as ‘sad’ and a serious threat to investigative journalism. ‘Under the majority’s articulation of the reporter’s privilege, or lack thereof, absent a showing of bad faith by the government, a reporter can always be compelled against her will to reveal her confidential sources in a criminal trial,’ he wrote. ‘The majority exalts the interests of the government while unduly trampling those of the press, and in doing so, severely impinges on the press and the free flow of information in our society.’”
Posted on: Sun, 21 Jul 2013 21:50:23 +0000