A proposed media shield law protects bloggers like Ben Franklin and Thomas Paine

The Senate Judiciary Committee has approved its version of a "media shield law," designed to protect the confidential sources of journalists. The law now moves to the full Senate, and it would need to be reconciled with a similar bill in the House before being presented to Barack Obama. The passage of a media shield bill is critically important, in that the threat of imprisonment for refusal to comply with subpoenas discourages journalists from covering numerous serious issues. According to Huffpo, the bill not only protects full time journalists, but "uses a broad definition of journalists by including bloggers, citizen journalists and freelancers." According to the Examiner,

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) endorsed the "carefully crafted" bill's inclusion of bloggers, and hailed Benjamin Franklin for his "anonymous blogs" that explained "the reasons why this country should exist." Pamphleteer Thomas Paine likewise got a few mentions as the senators debated whether to define a journalist as someone employed by a mainstream organization.
The protection allowed by this version of the bill are not absolute; they can be overridden:
With the exception of national security cases, the bill establishes a balancing test to determine whether a reporter must reveal their source. A federal judge would weigh the public's right to know versus national security claims made by the government.
The burden of proof depends on whether the case from which the subpoena is issued is a criminal case or a civil case. In criminal cases, the journalist would have to show that guarding the anonymity of sources is in the public interest. In non-criminal cases, the government bears the burden of showing that disclosure of a confidential source outweighs the public interest in news-gathering. I was elated to see that bloggers and citizen journalists are being considered for this protection, especially given the fact that so much important information being published these days is by people who are not full-time professional journalists. And see here for an illustration of the problem with mainstream" journalists." For a related post, see these three short videos featuring John Nichols and Robert McChesney, the founders of Free Press (from the 2008 National Conference for Media Reform), discussing the role of citizen journalists, among many other important media reform topics).

Continue ReadingA proposed media shield law protects bloggers like Ben Franklin and Thomas Paine

Aggressive journalists desperately needed.

Glenn Greenwald asks why there aren't more journalists willing to conduct hardball interviews of politically powerful guests. What he has in mind is the kind of interrogation Rachel Maddow expertly conducted with an anti-gay blowhard. Greenwald sets forth the particular strategies that made Maddow's interview effective. For example, where the guests opinions are not entitled to respect and deference, don't give any. Key quote:

Just imagine how much better things could be if our political leaders were routinely subjected to the kind of surgically probing, lie-exposing interrogation which Rachel imposed on her homosexual-converter guest. But the reasons they almost never are speak volumes about our media stars and their true function.

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Climate and Conspiracy

Climate Change--Those Hacked Emails It's been a week or more since a gentleman hacker stole a bunch of private emails from the University of East Anglia in an attempt to liberate supposedly secret evidence that the entire climate change crowd is in on a conspiracy to defraud the public. I haven't yet heard if anyone is filing charges against the man, but evidently some folks, especially the Limbaugh-Beck screaming meme crowd, feel this is the new Pentagon Papers and the hacker in question is their Daniel Elsberg. It is an unfortunate fact that some things---like this issue---are so complex that most people cannot follow all the data to the conclusions. They haven't the time, the resources, or, frankly, the inclination. But then if anybody could parse evidence at this level, what would need scientists for? Why would anyone devote an entire life to researching one thing? If Joe the Plumber could actually understand the science behind the Large Hadron Collider, Paleontology, Evolution, and Climate Change, what do we need specialists for? I'm sure someone has an answer along the lines of "We don't! They just sponge off taxpayers and study stuff no one gives a damn about!" I'd like to think most people are not so easily gulled, but I've been disappointed before and probably will be again.

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Left, Right, Center, Lunacy Is Still Lunacy

Several years ago at a science fiction convention I saw a charlatan in the dealers room fleecing people with bogus "kirlian aura" photographs. The person in question had constructed an elaborate chair with complex armrests with hand-shaped inserts and cables. The victim sat in the chair, placed the hands on the plates, and a photograph was taken (a polaroid) that showed a bust portrait int he midst of swirling colors. I got a glimpse of the set up---there were mirrors on either side of the lens reflecting brightly-colored streamers that flanked the magic chair. Somehow, this created a lens flare of multi-hued cloudiness. I am a photographer by training. I know a little something about Kirlian "aura" photographs, enough to know that (a) you can't take them in full light and (b) Polaroid never made a film sensitive enough in the format this person was using to record the faint electrical tracings. You also couldn't run enough electricity safely through a whole human body to create even a thin outline much less the solar flare explosion these prints displayed. They looked nothing like a Kirlian photograph. But people were buying them, fifteen bucks a shot, and I expect the photographer in question made nice change that weekend. When an acquaintance of mine was showing hers off later I made a couple of remarks about the fraudulent aspects of it and all I got for my trouble was frostiness and dismissal as a hopeless skeptic. I confess I took that as my cue to say nothing further. I did not unmask the fraud, which would have been brave and ethical, but might well have gotten me pilloried as a spoil sport. This past year I sat on a panel about alternate religions and mythology at another convention. I was the only self-professed atheist on the panel. When I made my introductions and stated my position, a co-panelist asked me "So you're not a Christian? What are you then?" I was a bit dumbfounded. Did she not know what the word Atheist meant? I expounded. "I'm a humanist and rational materialist. I think all religions are essentially the same. Some are more benign than others but all of them are based on assumptions I can't accept. So I'm not only not a Christian, I am not a Jew, a Muslim, a Hindu, a Buddhist, or any variety of Pagan or New Age mystic. As far as I'm concerned, they're all bunk." I was not pilloried. We had a good discussion. I chopped up every religious assertion regardless its source and we all had a rousing good time fencing with each other and I was even congratulated later for having the guts to state my position clearly and forcefully. But afterward, the same co-panelist who asked my what I was if not a Christian came up to me and pressed me further. Do I believe in reincarnation? "No. There's no proof for it. It seems to me to be the same sort of wishful thinking all the rest of them embrace and I have no use for it." I think she was offended at that point. Thinking about it now, I'm beginning to realize why we have such difficulty in public forums discussing religion, especially religion in our political life.

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Denialist Wall Street Journal admits Peak Oil has arrived

The trickle of Peak Oil articles has turned into a flood recently. First came the chief economist for the International Energy Agency (IEA), Dr. Fatih Birol, with the shocking announcement that "My main motto never changes, the era of low oil prices is over." Then there were the whistleblowers at the IEA who alleged that the IEA's rosy forecasts of rising production timed perfectly to satisfy rising demand had been rigged at the request of the United States. "We have entered the Peak Oil zone. I think that the situation is really bad," one whistleblower said. Then, Warren Buffet made his "all-in" wager on rail transportation. Now, even the Wall Street Journal has capitulated. Last week, they ran a front-page story titled "Oil officials see limit looming on production". The actual Wall Street Journal site requires a subscription, but it has been mirrored a number of places online if you're interested. The first paragraph of the story reads:

A growing number of oil-industry chieftains are endorsing an idea long deemed fringe: The world is approaching a practical limit to the number of barrels of crude oil that can be pumped every day.

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