By Rick Manning
The First Amendment is a pesky thing to politicians. It allows, nay
encourages, the exact kind of diverse political speech that those in
power loathe. Born out of the legacy of the Revolutionary War
pamphleteers and their radical thoughts of freedom, today these liberty
lovers take the form of citizen journalists utilizing the Internet to
push ideas, advocate, report and uncover stories that aren’t being told,
afflicting the powerful and holding them accountable. This has been at
the heart of press freedom, not the corporate media empires that are
often little more than government propaganda machines.
Now, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), not content to just continue
her long running attempt to put a dagger into the right to keep and bear
arms, is leading the charge to create a federal government sanctioned
journalist licensing system that threatens the First Amendment as well.
Her Orwellian titled “Free Flow of Information Act of 2013”, which is
also known as the “media shield bill” has passed out of the Senate
Judiciary Committee and is expected to gain the votes necessary to get
out of the Senate. Proponents of the bill, are advocating that
journalists be licensed by the federal government so that they can be
protected from potential prosecution from a government insisting that
their confidential sources be revealed.
In a scorching legal rebuke to Feinstein, Senators Jeff Sessions, Ted
Cruz, Mike Lee and John Cornyn argue vehemently against the law in a
Minority View report writing,
“The freedom of the press does not
discriminate amongst groups or individuals—it applies to all Americans.
As the Supreme Court has long recognized, it was not intended to be
limited to an organized industry or professional journalistic elite. See Branzburg v. Hayes,
408 U.S. 665, 704 (1972) (the ‘‘liberty of the press is the right of
the lonely pamphleteer who uses carbon paper or a mimeograph just as
much as of the large metropolitan publisher who utilizes the latest
photocomposition methods. Freedom of the press is a fundamental personal
right[.]’’); Lovell v. Griffin, 303 U.S. 444, 452 (1938)
(‘‘The liberty of the press is not confined to newspapers and
periodicals. It necessarily embraces pamphlets and leaflets. . . . The
press in its historic connotation comprehends every sort of publication
which affords a vehicle of information and opinion.’’).
The Founders recognized that
selectively extending the freedom of the press would require the
government to decide who was a journalist worthy of protection and who
was not, a form of licensure that was no freedom at all. As Justice
White observed in Branzburg, administering a privilege for reporters
necessitates defining ‘‘those categories of newsmen who qualified for
the privilege.’’ 408 U.S. at 704 That inevitably does violence to ‘‘the
traditional doctrine that liberty of the press is the right of the
lonely pamphleteer who uses carbon paper or a mimeograph just as much as
of the large metropolitan publisher who utilizes the latest
photocomposition methods.’’ Id.
The First Amendment was adopted to prevent—not further—the federal government licensing of media. See Lovell,
303 U.S. at 451 (striking an ordinance ‘‘that . . . strikes at the very
foundation of the freedom of the press by subjecting it to license and
censorship. The struggle for the freedom of the press was primarily
directed against the power of the licensor.’’).
But federal government licensing is
exactly what the Free Flow of Information Act would create. The bill
identifies favored forms of media—‘‘legitimate’’ press—by granting them a
special privilege. That selective grant of privilege is inimical to
the First Amendment, which promises all citizens the ‘‘freedom of the
press.’’ See Branzburg, 408 U.S. at 704 (‘‘Freedom of the press is a fundamental personal right[.]’’)
(emphasis added). It also threatens the viability of any other form of
press. The specially privileged press will gain easier access to news.
That will tip the scales against its competitors and make it beholden to
the government for that competitive advantage. A law enacted to protect
the press from the state will, in fact, make that press dependent upon
the federal government— anything but free.”
Feinstein’s proposed licensing law might seem innocuous if not for
the fresh stench of federal government targeting of conservative groups
through the IRS, the Federal Communications Commission’s recent attempts
to monitor news rooms, the spying on Associated Press reporters by
Obama’s Department of Justice to gain access to their sources and most
recently, the announced giveaway of First Amendment protections for
those who use the Internet by the U.S. Commerce Department all of which
serve as recent examples where this Administration has proven their
enmity to dissent.
Feinstein’s bill, when coupled with the U.S. government’s attempt to
turn the Internet over to international control, represents a turning
point in the relationship between the federal government and the free
flow of information in the modern world.
Under the Obama Administration’s proposal to give control of the
Internet to unspecified international sources, citizen journalists will
necessarily lose their First Amendment shield of protection from
censorship. A censorship that is likely to first find its form in
blocking ideas inimical to the unelected, unaccountable, unknown new
Internet governing body’s group think. Ideas that are deemed
“dangerous”, “hateful” or “offensive” to some arbiter of worldwide
political correctness will disappear from the Internet as Internet
Protocol addresses of “offending” parties simply vanish.
Unlicensed political dissent, a critical component to the Web’s
democratization of information that scares the elite who cling to power,
is equally threatened by Feinstein’s attempt to create a non-protected
class of journalists. The local blogger who has a buddy who reveals
corruption at City Hall deserves the same right to be able to protect
sources as the Washington Post reporter who dutifully regurgitates the
latest Obama Administration planned Friday afternoon leak.
The same whistle blower’s identity should be protected whether he or
she talks to
NetRightDaily.com,
TalkingPointsMemo, or the
Los Angeles
Times.
Failure to convey the same First Amendment protections to all people,
whether they are paid or not for their activities, strikes at the heart
of the basis of our nation’s most precious freedoms, and Congress
should reject the Free Flow of Information Act of 2013.
Rick Manning @rmanning957) is the vice president of public policy and communications for Americans for Limited Government. Reprinted with permission.
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