Senator Diane Feinstein has taken up the fight for truth and liberty, just as she has done for health care and the widespread disarmament of American citizens.
This month Congess has been debating a new media shield law, which according to its authors, aims to protect journalists and bloggers from being forced to testify about their work should their sources or information come into question.
But Diane Feinstein has refused to support the bill, noting that the law would essentially grant this shield privilege to anyone who chooses to share their opinion on the internet (including those pajama sporting bloggers and news aggregators working out of their basements).
But because freedom of speech, as interpreted by Feinstein, is nothing more than a privilege granted to us by her and her ilk in Congress, she has taken steps to ensure that only those journalists sanctioned by the government will be protected by the new shield laws.
The final hurdle for the Judiciary Committee was defining who is a journalist in the digital era.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) insisted on limiting the legal protection to “real reporters” and not, she said, a 17-year-old with his own website.
“I can’t support it if everyone who has a blog has a special privilege … or if Edward Snowden were to sit down and write this stuff, he would have a privilege. I’m not going to go there,” she said.
Feinstein introduced an amendment that defines a “covered journalist” as someone who gathers and reports news for “an entity or service that disseminates news and information.”
The definition includes freelancers, part-timers and student journalists, and it permits a judge to go further and extend the protections to any “legitimate news-gathering activities.”
