LEGAL STATUS of JOURNALISM
Journalists around the world often write about the
governments in their nations, and those governments have widely varying
policies and practices towards journalists, which control what they can
research and write, and what press organizations can publish. Many Western
governments guarantee the freedom of the press, and do relatively little to
restrict press rights and freedoms, while other nations severely restrict what
journalists can research and/or publish.
Journalists in many nations have enjoyed some privileges not
enjoyed by members of the general publlic, including better access to public
events, crime scenes and press conferences, and to extended interviews with
public officials, celebrities and others in the public eye. These privileges
are available because of the perceived power of the press to turn public
opinion for or against governments, their officials and policies, as well as
the perception that the press often represents their consumers. These
privileges extend from the legal rights of journalists but are not guaranteed
by those rights. Sometimes government officials may attempt to punish
individual journalists who irk them by denying them some of these privileges
extended to other journalists.
Nations or jurisdictions that formally license journalists
may confer special privileges and responsibilities along with those licenses,
but in the United States the tradition of an independent press has avoided any
imposition of government-controlled examinations or licensing. Some of the
states have explicit shield laws that protect journalists from some forms of
government inquiry, but those statutes' definitions of "journalist"
were often based on access to printing presses and broadcast towers. A national
shield law has been proposed.
In some nations, journalists are directly employed, controlled
or censored by their governments. In other nations, governments who may claim
to guarantee press rights actually intimidate journalists with threats of
arrest, destruction or seizure of property (especially the means of production
and dissemination of news content), torture or murder.
Journalists who elect to cover conflicts, whether wars
between nations or insurgencies within nations, often give up expectation to
protection by government, if not giving up their rights to protection by
government. Journalists who are captured or detained during a conflict are
expected to be treated as civilians and to be released to their national
government.
Rights of journalists versus those of
private citizens and organizations
Journalists enjoy similar powers and privileges as private
citizens and organizations. The power of journalists over private citizens is
limited by the citizen's rights to privacy. Many who seek favorable
representation in the press (celebrities, for example) do grant journalists
greater access than others enjoy. The right to privacy of a private citizen may
be reduced or lost if the citizen is thrust into the public eye, either by
their own actions or because they are involved in a public event or incident.
Citizens and private organizations can refuse to deal with
some or all journalists; the powers the press enjoy in many nations often make
this tactic ineffective or counter-productive.
Citizens in most nations also enjoy the right against being
libeled or defamed by journalists, and citizens can bring suit against journalists
who they claim have published damaging untruths about them with malicious
disregard for the truth. Libel or defamation lawsuits can also become conflicts
between the journalists' rights to publish versus the private citizen's right
to privacy. Some journalists have claimed lawsuits brought against them and
news organizations — or even the threat of such a lawsuit — were intended to
stifle their voices with the threat of expensive legal procedings, even if
plaintiffs cannot prove their cases. This is referred to as the Chilling
effect.
In many nations, journalists and news organizations must
function under similar threat of retaliation from private individuals or
organizations as from governments. Criminals and criminal organizations,
political parties, some zealous religious organizations, and even mobs of
people have been known to punish journalists who speak or write about them in
ways they do not like. Punishments can include threats, physical damage to
property, assault, torture and murder.
Right to protect
confidentiality of sources
Journalists' interaction with sources sometimes involves
confidentiality, an extension of freedom of the press giving journalists a
legal protection to keep the identity of a source private even when demanded by
police or prosecutors; withholding sources can land journalists in contempt of
court, or jailtime.
The scope of rights granted journalists varies from nation
to nation; in the United Kingdom, for example, the government has had more
legal rights to protect what it considers sensitive information, and to force
journalists to reveal the sources of leaked information, than the United
States. Other nations, particularly Zimbabwe and the People's Republic of China,
have a reputation of persecuting journalists, both domestic and foreign.
In the present decade in the U.S., despite a long tradition
of a journalist's ability to protect sources from government inquiry, the
Supreme Court has upheld lower federal court rulings that restrict to varying
degrees the rights of journalists to withhold information, and prosecutors on
the state and federal levels have sought to jail journalists who refuse demands
for information and sources they seek to protect.
Right of access to government
information
Like sources, journalists depend on the rights granted by
government to the public and, by extension, to the press, for access to
information held by the government. These rights also vary from nation to
nation (see Freedom of information legislation) and, in the United States, from
state to state. Some states have more open policies for making information
available, and some states have acted in the last decade to broaden those
rights. New Jersey, for example, has updated and broadened its Sunshine Law to
better define what kinds of government documents can be withheld from public
inquiry.
In the United States, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
guarantees journalists the right to obtain copies of government documents,
although the government has the right to redact, or black out, information from
documents in those copies that FOIA allows them to withhold. Other federal
legislation also controls access to information .
NAME : AYU SEPTIANI
NPM : 19610233
CLASS : 3SA01
General Resources : http://journalism.wikia.com/wiki/Legal_status
