The conference draft of the what had been referred to as the news media shield law (HB622) is really something quite different. It should properly be termed the Corporate News Media Minimal Protection Act, or something along those lines.
It’s hollowed out protections, such as they are, will have only limited application.
Who won’t get any benefits of the tiny shield?
Start-ups need not apply.
Any publication with a business model that doesn’t include paid subscribers will not qualify.
Freelancers won’t be covered unless already on assignment for a qualifying newspaper, magazine, or other covered entity.
Bloggers and digital journalists? Forget it.
Filmmakers, documentary or otherwise? Nada.
It’s a bill drafted by people who simply don’t understand the shape of the media in this century.
If you’re not one of the journalists still holding a spot in the mainstream corporate media, this bill does nothing for you, and could make the situation worse.
In a letter to legislators cited by Civil Beat, First Amendment attorney Jeff Portnoy had it right:
“If you cannot find the political will to do this, then kill the bill and let the shield law sunset. Don’t pretend to protect journalism with an anti-journalism bill.”
And that’s the bottom line.
We’re all better off without this silly bill that destroys what was one of the best shield laws in the country.
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Clayton Hee is very mad at you.
Hit that nail on the head, you did.
“It’s a bill drafted by people who simply don’t understand the shape of the media in this century.”
I wish it were that simple, but, as one of the journalists (27 years and counting) who will be frozen out of the protections, I sense something far more sinister at work here.
Hee, like many others, no doubt sees the waning influence and abilities of traditional media caused by cutbacks and consolidations and knows that those in the digital realm (such as ilind.net and, ahem, BigIslandNow.com) present opportunities to fill in some of the gaps in coverage that are forming.
And Hee accuses journalists of being self-serving!
Kudos to Karl Rhoads for his efforts but it shouldn’t have been so difficult to push lawmakers into the 20th century, let alone the 21st.
Can’t agree on Rhoads, Mr. Smith. He opened the door to the Hee foolishness by making silly amendments to what started as a very simple bill to repeal the “sunset” date; in other words, to permanently enact the existing law.
It was all downhill from there, as he could never get back to that starting point. Kinda like when Obama opens with his “final” position, that supposedly embodies a compromise with the right, only to move further to the right to seal the deal. Lawyerly, but rookie JUD chair gets outmaneuvered by non-lawyer, but wily politician.
You could recycle the title of yestersay’s post (“Concessions to employers could kill minimum wage increase”) as follows: “Concessions to Luddites killed shield law”.
Dave is right.I am retired but still care for free flow of information in an age whee so many news outlets are gone or have been consolidated into profit machines with diminished care for editorial integrity.
Hee, indeed, has prevailed again. But not for anything good.
Ian,
I am mailing you my check to subscribe to your publication, Kaaawa Kats. Feel free to mail me a copy when you feel like it. Remember to copyright all your articles and make a hard copy of your once a year compilation of all your blog stories which you can incorporate by reference to your publication, much like the blogs of the SA will be covered under the shield law.
Remember, a good lawyer can always find loopholes in any stupid law, and the HRS is filled with 14+ volumes now.
Russel.
My heart weeps for my eroding profession.
Why does Oahu re-elect Sen. Hee? Was there a time when he worked for the people rather than against them?
No there wasn’t.
Suppose a bunch of protesters want to get their message out to the public by posting YouTube videos and creating a “documentary film” about their planning sessions, their on-scene setting up of protest events, the events themselves, anticipated arrests, and the aftermath. The protesters have a friend with a cell phone or video camera (maybe the friend is actually a member of the protest group) who agrees to do interviews, make recordings of everything, edit and upload YouTube videos, and create a docudrama to show at a film festival or on ‘Olelo TV or release to the news media. He also chooses to write reports on his blog.
There’s no way the videographer/blogger in my example should be treated as a journalist whose notes and outtakes should be treated as privileged. He’s not a journalist, he’s a co-conspirator with the protesters. A real journalist is someone who is not a co-conspirator in the events he reports on (i.e., propagandizes for). A real journalist writes about a variety of topics, not solely a particular topic. A real journalist provides at least some semblance of appearing to be objective.
From what I have read, the only case where the existing law was successfully invoked to protect the confidentiality of a “journalist’s” films, notes, etc. was in the case of the protests by Hawaiian activists against a landowner building a house on beachfront land in Naue, Ha’ena, Kaua’i where there were ancient burials and a permit was granted allowing the house to be built above the burials, using cement footings to protect the burials from being disturbed in compliance with state law. The protesters were arrested for trespass, and the landowner filed a lawsuit against the protesters demanding compensation for his added expenses in guarding his property and getting the construction work done. The so-called “journalist” was in fact a propagandist filmmaker collaborating closely with the protesters. The landowner subpoenaed the filmmaker’s notes and film, but the journalist shield law prevented the landowner from getting the evidence proving his case.
Whatever you feel about the landowner in that case, or the issue whether he should be able to build a house atop ancient burials, I hope you will agree that the filmmaker/propagandist should not be treated as a legitimate journalist, and therefore the shield law needs to be rewritten to exclude people who are not really functioning as journalists.
I second the comment made by Jeff Portnoy in his letter to legislators quoted above.
I doubt very much Hee is concerned about this blog and the 5 or 6 people who usually respond. I know you don’t like it but I hardly see the mainstream media as having waning influence. It’s the blogs and things like CB that haven’t lived up to the hype. That’s why there is no love. Not on the same ball field I’m afraid and Hee knows it.
http://stateofthemedia.org/
Signs of the shrinking reporting power are documented throughout this year’s report. Estimates for newspaper newsroom cutbacks in 2012 put the industry down 30% since its peak in 2000 and below 40,000 full-time professional employees for the first time since 1978. In local TV, our special content report reveals, sports, weather and traffic now account on average for 40% of the content produced on the newscasts studied while story lengths shrink. On CNN, the cable channel that has branded itself around deep reporting, produced story packages were cut nearly in half from 2007 to 2012. Across the three cable channels, coverage of live events during the day, which often require a crew and correspondent, fell 30% from 2007 to 2012 while interview segments, which tend to take fewer resources and can be scheduled in advance, were up 31%. Time magazine, the only major print news weekly left standing, cut roughly 5% of its staff in early 2013 as a part of broader company layoffs. And in African-American news media, the Chicago Defender has winnowed its editorial staff to just four while The Afro cut back the number of pages in its papers from 28-32 in 2008 to 16-20 in 2012. A growing list of media outlets, such as Forbes magazine, use technology by a company called Narrative Science to produce content by way of algorithm, no human reporting necessary. And some of the newer nonprofit entrants into the industry, such as the Chicago News Cooperative, have, after launching with much fanfare, shut their doors.
This adds up to a news industry that is more undermanned and unprepared to uncover stories, dig deep into emerging ones or to question information put into its hands. And findings from our new public opinion survey released in this report reveal that the public is taking notice. Nearly one-third of the respondents (31%) have deserted a news outlet because it no longer provides the news and information they had grown accustomed to.
Blogs and Civil Beat are experiments that have a chance of surviving into the future. Modern mainstream outlets do not, like it or not.
I believe this a lot of this stems from this. http://damontucker.com/2009/07/01/big-island-filmmaker-caught-up-in-shield-law-and-subpoenaed/
This was so long ago and folks are still afraid of new media.
Ironically, Damon, I was the only journalist to cover Keoni’s hearing in Circuit Court, reporting for The Hawaii Independent. From there it was picked up by the corporate media that now gets all the protection from what Ian aptly terms a “tiny shield.”
As Jim Bickerton commented after the judge granted the protective order:
“It’s a good day for journalists. [The shield law] will give journalists the ability to dig deeper into their subject and that benefits society as a whole. It creates a chilling effect on journalists if they think they will be dragged into a lawsuit.”
Auwe.
The Democratic Party of Hawaii fails the First Amendment, by association with Sen. Hee.
Staff, April 30, 2013, Pacific Business News
Circulation for the Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s print edition declined in the past year, while the newspaper’s paid online subscriptions and branded editions pushed average total circulation up by 28 percent, according to figures released by the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
The total average weekday circulation for the newspaper’s print edition was 125,726 as of March 31, compared to 126,411 at the same time last year. Total average circulation for the newspaper’s Sunday print edition declined by 2 percent to 138,020 from 140,556 a year ago.
The Star-Advertiser’s total average weekday circulation, including the paid online subscriptions and branded editions, including Midweek, was 268,244 as of March 31, compared to 209,915 a year ago. That figure included 16,149 digital replicas and 73,525 branded editions.
Total average circulation for the Star-Advertiser on Sunday rose 26 percent to 207,139 as of March 31, including online editions, from 164,316 a year ago.
I find it curious that after all of this attention on the media shield law there is not a word on Civil Beat, etc., about the Department of Justice’s acquisition of AP ‘s phone records when it was a big national story yesterday.