Journalists & First Amendment Rights

Last night's lecture in support of the First Amendment was very informative. Bob Port, senior editor at the Times Union newspaper, has been a journalist for 25 years. He claims that there are two things it takes to be a good journalist: skill and courage. He went on to say that journalism is a lonely profession, and "It takes a lot of courage," stated Port. Port also said that "Journalism these days is changing, and changing radically." This is referring to the new technology, and also the changing laws in our society.
Lucy Danglish, executive director of the Reporter's Committee for Freedom of the Press, presented a lot of information during her lecture. She spoke a lot about September 11th, and how this greatly impacted the rights of journalists to protect their sources. These events also led to the need of a Federal Shield Law. There are currently shield laws in many states, but journalists have no protection when dealing with the federal government. Protecting confidential sources is crucial to maintaining a relationship between journalists and sources. "If you make a promise to a source, you keep that promise," states Dalglish. During her lecture, she talked about Vanessa Leggett, a freelance wrtier and book author who was jailed for 168 days for not revealing her sources and refusing to turn over her research materials to the government. Journalist Toni Locy, got into a similar situation when she was subpoenaed in 2006 for not remembering her confidential sources. Locy was a journalist that periodically discarded all of her notes when she did not need them anymore, which is a problem not. Danglish then went on to give suggestions to prevent this from happening to other journalists. One of them was to go "back to basics," meaning keeping no electronic records of sources, and meeting sources in person to prevent being subpoenaed later. Danglish also suggested staying consistent with handling notes. Keeping all of your notes except for the ones dealing with a high profile case will look suspicious to the government and may lead to further problems.