Bad moves kill media shield law

The now unavoidable June 30 expiration of Hawaii’s media shield law, a model statute nationally, will deal a blow to advocates of robust news reporting. They must press forward to resurrect its protections in the next session of the Legislature.

What makes this so challenging is that the law is widely misperceived as a plum that only journalists will use. The broad community benefits of a shield law are poorly understood.

Here’s a brief explainer. A shield law enables journalists to offer protections to news sources who provide information on the basis of anonymity. Under specific circumstances, the journalists could not be threatened with jail for not revealing their sources or for refusing to turn over unpublished notes or data — video or audio clips or printed documents, for example.

Without this protection, whistleblowers who want to call attention to corruption, or private citizens who have knowledge of misdeeds, will be far less likely to step forward to publicize something of great interest to their neighbors.

Act 210, which became law five years ago but with a 2013 sunset date, does not give journalists a free pass. It is a carefully negotiated, limited protection that shields journalists from excessive government intrusion in their work without frustrating government’s right to evidence in major crimes or in civil cases of defamation.

It also extends those protections to established journalists who work in the current — and growing — online platform. That category rightly includes established bloggers who regularly fulfill the journalist’s function of providing information and commentary. It acknowledges the simple fact that the 21st century media landscape now gives publishing access to nontraditional journalists, and that journalism is defined more by the work that’s produced and less by the means of distribution.

Lawmakers had the choice to do the simple, right thing and make the shield law permanent. Instead, in its various forms, House Bill 622 had sought to weaken the shield, adding exceptions that weren’t clearly defined and thus would have provided little real protection at all. Bloggers and other nontraditional categories would be excluded.

Advocates for the law argued that it was better for journalists to use the U.S. Constitution as their shield rather than a diminished law, and work to persuade the judge in each case that protection was warranted.

The 11th-hour maneuver by the House to reject the conference committee draft of the bill and propose instead to simply extend the existing law for two years was well-intended — but had the effect of killing the bill, since the Senate did not agree with that approach.

In the wearying course of this legislation, no fewer than four different versions of the bill emerged. Sen. Clayton Hee, Judiciary and Labor Committee chairman, led a misleading and wrong-headed charge to weaken the solid law.

Most of the amendments sought to accommodate the wishes of Deputy Attorney General Dierdre Marie-Iha, who wants to ensure that the government has expansive powers to compel journalists to testify about their work.

A shield against such power is essential to ensure that investigative reporters, and the sources on whom they depend, can collaborate on sensitive stories in the public interest without the threat of subpoena.

When the state Supreme Court’s Standing Committee on Evidence reviewed Act 210, it recommended permanence without changes. The only dissent came from Marie-Iha, representing the Attorney General’s Office.

Clearly, the public would be best served not by the short-term interests of one governmental office but by the preservation of a fundamental value: a vibrant, independent press in a democratic society.