"To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible;
to be credible we must be truthful." - Edward R Murrow
Showing posts with label obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label obama. Show all posts

The pen may be mightier than the sword, but it's stronger with a shield

Posted in Labels: , , , , , , , , | at 4:50 PM

Shield laws are on my mind. The future of the shield law is definitely going to contribute in a large way to the future of journalism.

For anyone reading this blog that may not understand "shield laws" I can explain. A shield law is legislation that is designed to provide news reporters/journalists the right to keep a source secret. The right to stand up in a court of law and refuse to testify the source in which the information/quotes were gathered from.

Many journalists have actually gone to jail due to the decision to NOT reveal the sources.

Without going back in history and recalling every case, I want to think to the future.
I know that each state has its own specific shield law or form of this law, but when it gets to the federal level how will it all be decided?

A fairly recent news article I found addressing this topic is from September 30, 2009 (scroll down to the bottom to my links to read more. I have included a more recent one that links to an article from late December 2009). An online article via nytimes.com says:

"The Obama administration has told lawmakers that it opposes legislation that could protect reporters from being imprisoned if they refuse to disclose confidential sources who leak material about national security, according to several people involved with the negotiations.
The administration this week sent to Congress sweeping revisions to a 'media shield' bill that would significantly weaken its protections against forcing reporters to testify. -Charlie Savage"
http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/obama_administration_opposing.php

Further reading explains that the rights may only extend to journalists that are hired for specific companies. That means that this right would not extend to freelance journalists, bloggers, college students working for college papers.. in other words anyone that isn't employed to a specific news organization.


I can see from the administration's point of view, but I think that it is my right as a journalist to be able to obtain this information -- and by interviewing other sources that will go on record and argue for / against the information provided , be able to expose this information. Anonymous sources can cause the credibility of the story to decrease, but in investigative cases it is necessary. I don't think it should happen quite often, and I think most of the time it happens once in a while when a BIG story is being leaked. Journalists know not to randomly allow confidentiality to a source unless it would truly damage the source's reputation, job, safety, etc. We need to keep our sources safe.

Journalists aren't working against the government (at least not me), and we are not working FOR the government. We are working alongside them, and everyone else, in order to accomplish our goal, to educate the public on things that truly matter. To provide information that the public deserves to have.

This could all be subjective, and I know most of it is, but I wonder what deep dark secret the government could be hiding if it is that important that cases of national security are not kept confidential.

I apologize if I don't make sense. I am rather sick and have been bedridden for over 24 hours. Shield laws have been one of the most prominent things within my mind, and I thought I would share this with you all.

Other articles regarding the shield laws:
USNEWS
HUFFINGTONPOST
POLITICALTICKER

Cheers.


"Anonymous sources are a practice of American journalism in the 20th and 21st century, a relatively recent practice. The literary tradition of anonymity goes back to the Bible. " - Joe Klein

Read Users' Comments (2)

Share |

Follow up to State of the Union Address

Posted in Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | at 5:30 PM

I apologize for not getting to this sooner.


I have attached the video from youtube.com. I personally watched it via CNN, but it really doesn't make a difference.

Obama's State of the Union Address, in my opinion, was very well done. I try as a journalist not to exert my personal opinion, but since this is my blog I figure I can get away with it once in a while. I appreciated what he had to say about college students and that getting an education should not lead to poverty.

I acquired the transcript via abcnews.com so that I could quote him accurately. The part that stood out the most to me was:

"...When we renew the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, we will work with Congress to expand these reforms to all fifty states. Still, in this economy, a high school diploma no longer guarantees a good job. I urge the Senate to follow the House and pass a bill that will revitalize our community colleges, which are a career pathway to the children of so many working families. To make college more affordable, this bill will finally end the unwarranted taxpayer-subsidies that go to banks for student loans. Instead, let's take that money and give families a $10,000 tax credit for four years of college and increase Pell Grants. And let's tell another one million students that when they graduate, they will be required to pay only ten percent of their income on student loans, and all of their debt will be forgiven after twenty years – and forgiven after ten years if they choose a career in public service. Because in the United States of America, no one should go broke because they chose to go to college. And it's time for colleges and universities to get serious about cutting their own costs – because they too have a responsibility to help solve this problem..."

(which I acquired directly from : http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/State_of_the_Union/state-of-the-union-2010-president-obama-speech-transcript/story?id=9678572&page=2)

Now, as for the analysis from other news sources:
I watched CNN right afterwards and they had their team of "senior political analyzers" go over every line that Obama spoke and show how the Democrats, Independents, and Republicans were "impacted" by each word/line spoken.

Newspapers did some news analysis through their print versions, but I notice that most of the analysis was done online. I think that this is because news outlets are able to deliver their information right after the President gave his speech, and the news outlets were also able to include the video footage from the State of the Union.

I would like to say that in the future journalism will go back to treating accuracy and objectivity as the two biggest deals when publishing an article, but that may be too idealistic. In my opinion, the analysis of the President's speech was particularly bias, and I feel like each reporter/anchor/writer inserted his/her own personal opinion when "reporting" about the speech.

I do not want to attack particular news sources, but in a lot of my findings the articles about the President's address were put under "news" "news analysis" to show that it would be hard news and objective, but the result was personal opinions inserted, as well as first person references.

I truly hope that the future of journalism will return to objectivity, because people that decide to read about the speech online without watching it themselves may blindly follow the opinion and "facts" given about the speech on the news website without actually getting their own opinions since none of the sites are able to objectively analyze his speech.

"A long life in journalism convinced me many presidents ago that there should be a large air space between a journalist and the head of a state. " - Walter Lippmann

Read Users' Comments (1)comments

Share |
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

VISITOR COUNT

free web counter