“The Pentagon Papers episode was hailed as a huge victory for press freedom and prompted new skepticism about government. But before any of that, somebody had to do hours of laborious, exacting work preparing articles about, and excerpts from, the papers for publication. Mr. Gold, an assistant foreign editor, shouldered much of the burden.”
Literally, a dying breed.
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press:
Judge Trey E. Loftin of the 43rd Judicial District Court in Weatherford, Texas, found that Wilson is not protected under the state’s shield law because “she did not create her blog for the purpose of making money.” The judge also noted that Wilson had no formal education in journalism and made no claims of total objectivity.
When we pass shield laws, we have to decide who’s in and who’s out. As Justice White put it in the 1972 case Branzburg v. Hayes, this type of line-drawing presents “practical and conceptual difficulties of a high order.”
“Sooner or later, it would be necessary to define those categories of newsmen who qualified for the privilege, a questionable procedure in light of the traditional doctrine that liberty of the press is the right of the lonely pamphleteer who uses carbon paper or a mimeograph just as much as of the large metropolitan publisher who utilizes the latest … methods.”
There was no reason to detain Ferral, other than police didn’t know what to do with her. In this country, that’s not a good enough reason to force a citizen to lie face down and be cuffed.
