ACLU PETITION: Tell President Obama to protect our freedom of press

[Judy Reed]

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PETITION: Tell President Obama to protect our freedom of press.

<https://www.aclu.org/secure/tell-obama-protect-reporters?ms=autofire_acluaction_freepress_130515>

To President Obama:
The freedom of press is under assault by your own administration. Calling for reporter shield legislation this session was the right response, but only if you support a strong bill that:

1) Protects the identities of reporters' confidential sources;

2) applies to journalists in both traditional and new media;

3) applies to third parties who play critical roles during newsgathering activities, like the phone companies subpoenaed for the AP phone records;

4) and prioritizes constitutional protections, with limited exceptions to ensure due process for criminal defendants and to prevent actual and imminent harm.

Signed,

=====================

Source:  ACLU

Tell President Obama to protect our freedom of press.

From exposing torture at Abu Ghraib to the revelation of warrantless wiretapping under the Bush administration, members of the media help protect us all.

And this week we¹ve learned about one of the most chilling, unprecedented assaults on our freedom of press in recent memory.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) secretly retrieved the records of over 20 telephone lines used by nearly 100 Associated Press reporters last year. It¹s an unthinkable abuse of power designed to intimidate both reporters and potential whistleblowers from uncovering government corruption and illegality.

Now President Obama is feeling intense political pressure to do something. But though he's calling for a federal reporter shield law, he's failed to mention the role his administration already played in preventing a comprehensive shield bill from passing in 2009‹which might have prevented this scandal altogether!

So we need to let President Obama know now, while the media and the public are demanding action in the face of this scandal, that talk is cheap and weak legislation is too little, too late.

Sign the petition to President Obama‹urge him to push through a strong reporter shield law now that respects the freedom of press and our right to know.   <https://www.aclu.org/secure/tell-obama-protect-reporters?ms=autofire_acluaction_freepress_130515>

The breadth of data the DOJ was able to collect‹in the name of tracking down the single source of a government leak‹and the secrecy with which they went about it, was truly unprecedented.

But with a reporter shield law in place, just like forty states around the nation already have, the DOJ might never have gotten away it. And it could have extended the same protections to phone companies, who are critical to the free flow of information to the media‹unless we want to go back to the Watergate days of reporters meeting their sources in dimly lit garages.

When President Obama called for a reporter shield law a few years back, his administration stalled important progress on a comprehensive shield bill by carving out such a massively overbroad national security exception that it ceased to protect the press much at all.

So, we need to make sure we hold the president accountable to his promise by pushing for a strong and effective reporter shield law that doesn¹t prioritize government power over our right to know.

Take action now. Tell President Obama you don¹t want another AP subpoena scandal‹you want strong reporter shield laws instead. <https://www.aclu.org/secure/tell-obama-protect-reporters?ms=autofire_acluaction_freepress_130515>


This wasn¹t just an attack on journalists‹ it was an attack on all our freedom. Let¹s stand together to keep the presses rolling, unfettered from outrageous government overreach.
I¹ll be right there with you,

Anthony for the ACLU Action team

American Civil Liberties Union
125 Broad Street, 18th Floor
New York, NY, 10004, USA

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An informed citizenry is freedom¹s best defense.
"I know no safe depositor of the ultimate powers of society but the people
themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their
control with wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them
but to inform their discretion."   ~Thomas Jefferson 1820