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We Don't Need No Stinkin' Shield Law, Part 2The First Amendment belongs to citizens, not the corporate press.

By Jack Shafer
Updated Wednesday, April 16, 2008, at 8:31 PM ET

Read Part 1 of Shafer's screed against the shield law.

(Continued from page 1)

Of the many flaws in the shield law, the most glaring is that it imagines that the highest wattage of the First Amendment belongs only to the guild that makes up the media industry. The amendment really belongs to anybody who decides to express themselves. The corporate media's effort to pass a law that would expand their rights at the expense of those outside the guild reflects the delusion that journalists are the "Fourth Estate, the co-equal of the other three branches of government. The late British journalist Bernard Levin warned us about these Fourth Estate pretensions in a seething Nov. 25, 1980, London Times column, declaring that:

It cannot be emphasized too strongly, nor indeed put too extravagantly, that the press has no duty to be responsible at all, and it will be an ill day for freedom if it should ever acquire one. The press is not the Fourth Estate; it is not part of the constitutional structure of the country; it is not, and must never be, governed by any externally imposed rules other than the law of the land.

The law may demand that a newspaper's sources shall be revealed. The law is perfectly justified (though of course it may be wrong in any particular instance) in deciding as much; if an editor or other journalist then refuses to reveal his sources, he is a lawbreaker, and may quite justly be punished. The press occasionally claims a legal right to keep such confidences, likening itself in doing so to doctors or even priests; my own view is, and always has been, that the claim is not only untenable but abominable, precisely because it would … make the press part of the Establishment, which it must not be. … [W]e are, and must remain, vagabonds and outlaws, for only by so remaining shall we be able to keep the faith by which we live, which is the pursuit of knowledge that others would like unpursued, and the making of comment that others would prefer unmade. [Emphasis in the original.]

Levin counsels journalists not to believe they possess a right that doesn't belong to all citizens. Media outlets can't expect the public's support if they engage in special pleading before Congress for laws that mainly benefits them and their employees. If they expect anyone outside their business and professional circles to give a damn about the First Amendment, they should affirm the universality of the right to free speech and a free press. It's not a privilege reserved for the few with money and clout. It's a right for all.

******

Thanks to Alexander Cockburn for keeping the Bernard Levin column alive in his book Corruptions of Empire: Life Studies and the Reagan Era and in his newspaper work. Send your own Levinisms to . (E-mail may be quoted by name in "The Fray," Slate's readers' forum, in a future article, or elsewhere unless the writer stipulates otherwise. Permanent disclosure: Slate is owned by the Washington Post Co.)

Track my errors: This hand-built RSS feed will ring every time Slate runs a "Press Box" correction. For e-mail notification of errors in this specific column, type the word Levin in the subject head of an e-mail message and send it to .

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