You Can Help Protect Journalists

There's a bill to protect journalists that passed the House with bi-partisan support. Please let your Senator know you care about journalism, and the PRESS Act.

While more and more people—not least the Republican candidate in this year’s presidential election—lob verbal grenades at journalists and journalism, one crucial fact is getting buried in the rhetorical rubble. The more we treat journalists like criminals for doing their jobs, jailing them for refusing to reveal their sources or spying on them to find out what those sources are saying, the harder it will be for them to tell us the things we need to know.

That’s why all of us, not just the journalists it would protect, need the PRESS Act (S. 2074/HR 4250).

The name of the act, an acronym, stands for Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying Act. It would accomplish two important things. First, it would make it illegal for the government to force journalists to reveal their sources, notes, or other materials related to their reporting. Second, it would bar the government from spying on reporters’ phone records or internet search histories if they refuse to comply with such requests.

Reporters could only be subpoenaed or served with court orders or search warrants to prevent or identify the perpetrator of an act of terrorism or to prevent a threat of imminent violence, significant bodily harm, or death. A third party, such as an internet provider could not be forced to provide a reporter’s records unless there was a reasonable threat of imminent violence. And journalists or news organizations could challenge even those demands in court, with limited exceptions.

Almost all states, and DC, have laws that shield journalists to some extent from being forced to hand over their files for use in criminal prosecutions or private lawsuits. But the PRESS Act, the strongest federal shield law ever proposed, would strengthen those protections and standardize them nationwide.

Stronger protection is needed because existing laws have failed to protect journalists against abuse from the three most recent past presidential administrations. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), “Federal law enforcement officials improperly acquired reporters’ phone records on numerous occasions since 2004, under both Democratic and Republican administrations. On at least 12 occasions since 1990, law enforcement threatened journalists with jail or home confinement for refusing to give up their sources; some reporters served months in jail.”

That surveillance, notes the EFF, has made it more difficult for journalists to gather news, in part by likely discouraging sources from coming forward because their anonymity isn’t guaranteed. “We can’t know the important stories that weren’t published, or weren’t published in time, because of fear of retaliation on the part of journalists or their sources.”

And it could get worse. In a December 2022 letter to the Chicago Sun-Times in support of the bill, Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) wrote: “At a time when the former president is calling for journalists to be jailed and referring to the press as the ‘enemy of the people,’ it’s critical that we protect this pillar of our democracy.”

The House passed the PRESS Act in its last session and again this year, both times with strong bipartisan support. The bill has a lot of support in the Senate too, including from Durbin, who heads the committee that needs to introduce it, and from Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). It is also supported by news outlets and press freedom groups, including the Boston Globe, the Dallas Morning News, the ACLU, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, and many others. Yet it has not come up for a vote in the Senate.

In 2022, Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) stopped its progress by objecting when lead sponsor Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) moved that it be passed under unanimous consent. But its prospects are better this year. According to The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, “While the conventional wisdom has always been that federal shield legislation faces an uphill climb, particularly in the Senate Judiciary Committee where certain members (in both parties) have historically voiced national security concerns about recognizing a reporters’ privilege in leak cases, 2024 is a long way from 2013 and aggressive leak-hunting by both the Obama and Trump administrations has sharpened arguments in favor of a robust bill. Maybe this time will be the charm.”

The PRESS Act needs your help to get it over that hill. Contact your U.S. senators and urge them to sign on as co-sponsors. Contact Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin and ask him to bring it up for a vote. You can find senators’ contact information here.

Thanks to Jessica Craven, an easy way to contact your senators about this is to text PAIQYM to 50409 and it will send letters to both of your senators.