Alan Grayson: “I regret bringing this up at 10:30 at night. I apologize for that because this is a weighty matter, and I think it…”

“I regret bringing this up at 10:30 at night. I apologize for that because this is a weighty matter, and I think it deserves fair consideration. I hope we are not all too tired to deny this question the attention that it deserves. The purpose of this amendment is to raise the possibility of a Federal shield law that corresponds to shield law already in place in 49 States, but not at the level of the Federal Government. A shield law is legislation designed to protect a reporter's privilege or the right of news reporters to refuse to testify as to information and sources of information obtained during a news gather and dissemination process. In short, a reporter should not be forced to reveal his or her source, and that is in fact the law in 49 States, the only exception being Wyoming. This has come up in court cases at the Federal level and at the Supreme Court level, beginning with the 1972 case Branzburg v. Hayes, which I think poses this question in the microcosm. In that case, a reporter wanted to inform his readers about the nature of the drug hashish, and he realized the only way to go about that was to find and interview people who had actually used the drug hashish, and so he did that. After he published his article, relying upon these two confidential sources, at that point, he was subpoenaed to provide those sources, compromising their identity and compromising the principle of protecting your sources.…”