How big should the 'shield' be?

Not long ago, the boundaries between journalists and the rest of us were relatively clear. If you worked for a TV or radio station's news division, a newspaper or a magazine -- then you were a journalist. Everyone else was not. Those days are gone. The line distinguishing professional journalists from others who disseminate information, ideas and opinions to a wide audience has been blurred, perhaps beyond recognition.

But a federal shield law would have to take a stand. The version passed by the House defined journalism broadly as "the gathering, preparing, collecting, photographing, recording, writing, editing, reporting or publishing of news or information that concerns local, national or international events or other matters of public interest for dissemination to the public." Yet it would have limited the statute's protections to those who practice journalism "regularly" and "for a substantial portion of the person's livelihood or for substantial financial gain." The Senate, if it votes at all, appears likely to incorporate similar language.

Should a federal shield law be limited to "professionals," or ought it reflect a broader view of journalism in the Internet Age? Consider some tough cases.

Josh Wolf, a self-described independent journalist and filmmaker, spent 226 days in jail for refusing to hand over a video recording of a June 2005 riot to federal prosecutors, who sought it for their investigation of damage to a San Francisco city police car. Should Wolf and others like him be protected by any federal shield law?

How about Mayhill Fowler, in her own words "an over-educated 60-year-old woman with politics in her blood," who has followed Barack Obama across the country? It was Fowler who recorded Obama's remarks about "bitter" citizens who "cling to guns or religion" and then posted it on the Huffington Post's Off the Bus blog, sending a charge through the Democratic primaries. Should her audiotapes and notes be available to prosecutors or parties to some civil suit?

There may be defensible reasons for limiting a federal shield law to those "regularly" engaged in journalism and to those who do it for "substantial" financial gain -- terms that are (purposefully) vague and would have to be interpreted and defined by the courts. After all, anyone can create a blog, and Congress surely doesn't want to make available a journalists' privilege to anyone with a laptop and an Internet connection. But the reality is that people working outside traditional news organizations -- including some bloggers and citizen journalists -- have become a force in breaking news and analyzing it.

In its deliberation about a shield law, Congress has largely ignored these important changes in our media landscape and elided hard questions about who should be considered a journalist worthy of the statute's protections. There have been no hearings or substantive debate on these points. The bill's incredibly broad terminology is a congressional punt; it has left all that hard work to the courts.

At the same time, a federal shield law that limits its safeguards in this way promotes a narrow view of the 1st Amendment. The freedom of the press is a right and a privilege that belongs to all of us. And if Congress enacts a shield law, it ought to be one that reflects the reality that we're all capable of being journalists now.