Keep intact journalist shield law

The state law protecting journalists and bloggers from having to disclose confidential sources and other information faces a sunset date in July and needs to be made permanent. However, state lawmakers and the Abercrombie administration are proposing changes that would seriously limit the protection, which is vital to a free and vigorous press.

The present law should be kept intact without an expiration date.

The state House Judiciary Committee has advanced law changes to force journalists to reveal the source of information deemed substantial evidence material to investigation, prosecution or defense of a felony, potential felony, serious crime involving unlawful injury to people or animals. The existing law already includes exceptions only for felonies and civil actions involving defamation.

Forty states and the District of Columbia protect journalists from having to provide varying information about sources; Hawaii has provided one of the nation’s best protection of journalists since 2008. The following year, a state judge ruled that a documentary filmmaker did not have to reveal sources in a case on a dispute over Native Hawaiian burials on a building site. The law also protected a Web journalist from giving up her notes in the case of the Kaloko dam failure on Kauai.

The House Judiciary Committee has agreed to a proposal by the state Supreme Court’s appointed Standing Committee on the Rules of Evidence, which asserted that the exception of the shield “is too narrow” and “should apply to felonies and civil actions generally.”

If the journalist refuses to reveal a source of information under those broad circumstances, “then the normal contempt remedies should apply,” the committee opined. That would be a troubling threat to the media trying to convey to the public as much information as possible.

Exceptions proposed by the high court’s committee on the shield for journalists in civil cases worsens and weakens the law, which was drafted by the Lingle administration and excepts civil actions only in defamation cases, according to Jeff Portnoy, the attorney for news media interests, including the Star-Advertiser.

Stripping the shield in civil cases “is totally unacceptable and really going back to a position that was rejected five years ago and should remain rejected,” Portnoy said.

Lawmakers should adhere to that position as the bill moves to the House floor then to the Senate.

Fortunately, the House committee did reject another setback proposed by state Attorney General David Louie, who urged it to strip the protections entirely from “nontraditional journalists and bloggers,” who comprise an increasingly important medium of news for the public.

The administration’s proposal to strip the media of the use of unnamed sources in many circumstances comes as no surprise. In 2007, then-U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie was the only Democrat to vote against a shield law proposed in the House, arguing that the First Amendment alone should protect journalists from disclosing their confidential sources.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected that argument in 1972, ruling that the First Amendment does not protect journalists from revealing sources. A federal shield law still needs approval in the Senate.

In the meantime, Hawaii and other states need to protect reporters from having to reveal all sources of information, and to allow news people to provide information in the public interest without undue threat or coercion.

Hawaii can take pride in its journalists’ shield law, which results in public disclosures that in many cases would not be available. As methods of media broaden, journalists and bloggers should not be hindered.