I don’t take anything for granted.
My reporter’s shield bill is on the agenda for the Criminal Law Subcommittee meeting tomorrow.
Today I was counting votes.
I asked a colleague if he would vote for the bill.
“Yes,” he replied. “I voted for it last year when it failed.”
“I knew that,” I responded, since I had looked at that roll call yesterday. “I don’t take anything for granted.”
A former Fox News reporter will be testifying for my bill.
An example of the new bipartisan Annapolis?
Not quite.
Jana Winter reported on the mass shooting at a movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado.
A trial court judge ordered her to reveal the source for her story about a notebook that the gunman sent to his psychiatrist before the shooting.
However, since Winter was based in Manhattan, New York’s highest court ruled that the state’s reporter’s shield law would be violated if Winter was forced to reveal her source.
My bill would adopt that same standard. A Maryland-based reporter could not be subpoenaed to testify in another state if that testimony could not be required under our shield law.
The reporter, a press lawyer, and I will also meet with the committee chair before the hearing.
It’s not bipartisan. It’s not fair and balanced.
It’s personalizing what would otherwise be an abstract protection of the free press.
“Don’t try to make the bill better.”
That was my advice/plea to a member of the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee shortly before it heard my reporter’s shield legislation.
The law should be revised, I soon testified, to protect the 21st Century journalist who does not work fulltime in a newsroom but has a contractual relationship with the news media.
The bill, as I introduced it, would have gone further. It would have included “a self-employed journalist” but that didn’t make it past the pre-public meeting gathering of the Judiciary Committee leadership, despite my best effort.
For the Senate to broaden the bill now would delay its enactment. The House would reject any change.
The self-employed journalist (the pamphleteer when the First Amendment was adopted, the blogger in his pajamas today) will have to wait until next year.
Perhaps you remember the scene.
Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) is in a line at a movie and has to listen to an uninformed critic.
Out steps Marshall McLuhan from behind a poster to set things right.
At a Judiciary Committee voting session today, I tried to make the case for my bill that would allow a Maryland court to determine if a journalist could not be subpoenaed by another state because doing so would violate our reporter’s shield law.
The argument made against my bill: that decision should be made by a court in the state that is seeking the journalist’s testimony.
That court is not going to be sympathetic to applying Maryland law, I replied.
The bill lost, 8-13.
I emailed the Washington Post’s deputy general counsel, who had testified for the legislation. He responded that it might not even be a permissible objection to make, since the local rules typically list the grounds on which one can object to a subpoena.
I introduced House Bill 370 after reading about a Fox News reporter based in New York who had been subpoenaed by a Colorado court. The New York Court of Appeals ruled that doing so violated that state’s shield law.
The reporter’s attorney is based in Washington.
Next year, I’ll ask him to testify for the bill.
A down arrow in the Judiciary Committee’s back room usually means an unfavorable report in the public voting session.
Not this time.
When I testified on my reporter’s shield bill last month, it was clear that the legislation would die unless I narrowed the proposed definition of “journalist.”
House Bill 385 had a down arrow on the voting list distributed at the subsequent backroom meeting of the Judiciary Committee leadership.
I distributed an amendment removing self-employed journalists from the bill’s protection. Only people in a contractual relationship with the news media would gain the right not to reveal their confidential sources if subpoenaed.
At the next backroom meeting, still a down arrow.
In response to the concerns raised this time, Delegate Simmons and I drafted another amendment, limiting the shield to work performed “within the scope of a contract.”
This change earned us a “Jump ball” (no recommendation) designation.
Progress.
The public voting session would take place after Thursday’s bill hearings. When a colleague would walk out of the room that afternoon, I would follow and explain the amended bill.
It passed, 21-0.
My law school training taught me never to concede a point.
I relish the back and forth with a committee member when I’m testifying on one of my bills.
Ditto when I’m questioning a witness.
My legislative training, on the other hand, teaches me that compromise is achieved by conceding a point or two.
That was the case this afternoon when Delegate Simmons said, “I think your bill needs some massaging.”
House Bill 385 would extend the protection of the reporter’s shield to all people who engage in the gathering and disseminating of news, as defined by the existing law – even if they do so on their own blog.
But my bill won’t pass unless the definition of protected blogger is narrowed – massaged, as my colleague said.
After the hearing, I asked two of my witnesses, a lawyer for the Washington Post and the publisher of the Baltimore Brew, to email me descriptions of the reporting done for them by free lancers and other people who are not their employees.
I want to make sure our massaged bill includes them.
When the legislature meets for only 90 days, time is your enemy.
There are many hurdles that you have to clear for your bill to pass and only three months to do so.
Consequently, I don’t usually ask that my bills be heard in March.
Except for the three times that I pledged to do so over the last 36 hours.
In each instance, the prospect of a bill hearing where my concerns would be publicized can persuade the affected individual or group to address my concerns between now and that hearing.
One of my bills, however, will be heard tomorrow.
Maryland’s reporter’s shield law protects journalists from having to reveal their confidential sources when subpoenaed to testify – in certain circumstances.
House Bill 385 would extend that protection to bloggers who engage in the gathering and disseminating of news, as defined by the existing law.
I want my witnesses tomorrow to include a conservative blogger.
I asked a Republican colleague if he could contact RedMaryland, “the premier blog of conservative and Republican politics and ideas in the Free State.”
He readily agreed to try.
Some things depend upon technology.
The major obstacle to extending early voting to the Sunday before Election Day are the 36 hours needed to download data between 7 pm on Sunday and 7 am on Tuesday.
In Baltimore City, for example, there are five early voting centers for the week of early voting but hundreds of polling places on Election Day. To avoid fraud, the data on who voted early must be downloaded to thousands of electronic voting books.
That’s a very time consuming and costly process, according to a study of early voting conducted by the University of Baltimore’s Schaefer Center, in response to the Sunday voting legislation that I introduced last year.
To get a second opinion, I wrote a friend in the information technology field, “I welcome your thoughts on this analysis and the extent to which these concerns are likely to be addressed by the 2016 Presidential election.”
Some things happen by chance.
Walking to the post office on Church Circle, I saw the lobbyist for the newspaper industry.
She told me that they hope to have a national expert to testify next week on my legislation that would extend Maryland’s reporter’s shield law to bloggers who are not employed by a media company.
That was on my list of things to do. My staff won’t have to conduct that search now.
