The Wrld Page

Forum: Should bloggers get reporters' privileges?

The mythology of news puts outsized importance on confidential sources. The image of shadowy informants whispering forbidden truths is very cool, and deeply flattering to journalists. Reality is less romantic. Reporters spend a lot of time sifting contradictory and self-serving accounts from people who, far from dreading disclosure, are glad to be in the news.

Plus, confidential sources rarely are whistleblowers - vulnerable neophytes handing over files of grave importance while choking back their fears. Usually they're savvy operators who want to remain off-screen and don't want to undermine the ploy they hope the reporter will advance.

But source confidentiality has mythic importance anyway, because it epitomizes something fundamental about the role journalists like to think they play - and the role the rest of society needs them to play.

That has to do with the media as sanctuaries, freestanding institutions that people can turn to for protection and support. Just as the priest and the lawyer are entitled - indeed, obligated - to honor the secrets they're entrusted by people who seek their help, the journalist claims a similar privilege. Each serves institutions that have important work to do and need to stand independently and withstand outside compulsion to do it right.

That's the idea, anyway. And it's a good one, which is why as new media arise in the emerging news industry, advocates are keenly sensitive to any hint that when it comes to source protection, the upstarts don't deserve the same privilege as their established rivals.

So to the ruling last month by a New Jersey appeals court denying a blogger protection under the state's reporter shield law. The law, like those of 35 other states, authorizes journalists to resist court demands to disclose confidential sources. Here, the blogger, an ex-Microsoft employee named Shellee Hale, is being sued for defaming a tech company and won't identify sources she says she used in posting her assertions.

The ruling is only the second time a U.S. appellate court has decided whether shield laws apply to bloggers, according to the New Jersey Law Journal, and it was widely denounced online as a blanket repudiation of the blogosphere. BigJournalism.com's Jim Lakely called it a "backward-looking, snobbish decision" and offered a litany of scoops bloggers unaffiliated with established news organizations had

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