A Shield Law for The World--Editorial

The article talks about the right given to journalist under the First Amendment, this right is the right of journalists to keep their sources anonymity, and under no circumstances shall the sources be revealed; this is also known as the shield law. The article basically said that journalists should be able to write whatever they wish due to the freedom of speech. The article also stated that this shield law doesn’t only protect American journalists but also to many journalists around the world. The article also stated that if Congress would allow journalist to keep their sources anonymously, it would also protects them from prosecutorial habits that have been happening. The past attorneys generals have allowed prosecutors to used “contempt of the court” reason to violate the First Amendment right of journalists and made them reveal their sources. By doing this hypocrisy, the US is allowing ourselves to be criticized by other countries but it also made it alright when other countries are doing the same thing. Many other countries had followed the United States by allowing prosecutors to used journalists as a tool to get information. Although other countries abused the shield law, the US is the only country that had imprisoned its journalists. The article also mentioned that some countries in Europe had passed law to stop this issue. Belgium passed the law in 2005, Germany settled the issue in 2007, and France is planning to passed its version to give journalist confidential priority. This issue was never a problem in communist countries because they were too afraid to leak out official information, because there would not be any officials who are willing to risks a chance to being punished for leaking confidential business.
The author of the editorial noted that the United States should not be the blame of other countries mistake or the imprisonment of their reporters. However, he does think that American is a model because other countries based their shield laws on the US’s one and by putting our journalists in prison, we should have some responsibility to it. The US shield law is officially known as the Free Flow of Information Act, if this law is passed, it would guarantee more freedom of the press worldwide.