Protecting Journalists’ Sources Without a Shield: Four Proposals

Abstract

Journalists’ right to protect the identities of their confidential sources relies on an inconsistent set of court decisions based on constitutional and common law interpretations and state statutes. Efforts to bring some consistency to federal law through the passage of a shield law have stalled while journalists face new threats because of the vulnerability of their communications to discovery and monitoring by third parties. Also, the entry of non-professional communicators into the news ecosystem is causing courts to reevaluate and redefine long-standing protections. This article proposes four ways that sources could be better protected from unmasking without the passage of a shield law: improving whistleblower laws to better protect people who report illegal or unethical actions to the media; vastly reducing the number of government secrets to make “leaking” less attractive or necessary; changing legal strategy to focus on protecting the anonymity of sources instead of the rights of journalists to keep secrets; and more widespread and intelligent use of encrypted applications and software could all improve the security of journalistic sources. Because of the complexity of amending multiple whistleblower protection laws and changing the government’s document classification system, the article argues that the best solutions may be to persuade news organizations to change legal tactics and to use better encryption technology.