BOISE, ID – A bill seeking to protect the identity of sources who provide journalists with confidential information or documents is advancing to the Idaho House of Representatives for consideration.
On Wednesday afternoon, the House Judiciary, Rules and Administration Committee voted unanimously to send House Bill 158 to the floor of the Idaho House with a recommendation it passes.
Reps. Barbara Ehardt and Marco Erickson, both R-Idaho Falls, co-sponsored the bill, which Idaho Press Club President Melissa Davlin drafted.
Ehardt said Idaho is one of just 10 states without a media shield law in place. Supporters of the bill said it would create similar protections to those in place for whistleblowers and combat frivolous lawsuits.
The bill states, “No person engaged in journalistic activities shall be compelled to disclose in any legal proceeding, trial before any court, or before any jury the source of any information procured or obtained and published in a newspaper, print publication, digital news outlet, or by a radio or television broadcasting station with which the person is engaged or employed or with which the person is connected.”
The bill also applies to unpublished notes, recordings and interviews obtained during the newsgathering process.
Journalists with three local news organizations – the Sandpoint Reader, East Idaho News and BoiseDev – spoke in favor of creating a media shield law to protect sources who provide confidential sources to journalists.
Sandpoint Reader publisher advocates for shield law in Idaho
Ben Olson, co-owner and publisher of the Sandpoint Reader, said passing the bill would help protect confidential sources from retribution. During a public hearing Wednesday at the Idaho State Capitol in Boise, Olson testified that he was subject to nearly three years worth of harassment after investigating someone spreading racist propaganda on the property of a local school. Olson said the harassment included robocalls calling him a cancer in the community, calls for people to steal and burn copies of the local newspaper and pressure on local businesses that advertised in the Sandpoint Reader.
After the individual spreading racist propaganda was fined by the FCC in conjunction with the harassing robocalls, the individual sent Olson a subpoena seeking access to notes, emails and private recordings with sources Olson spoke to.
“(It) was an attempt to further harass me and potentially harass the sources who spoke with me,” Olson told legislators. “The Reader is a small newspaper. We have a staff of three people, myself included, and we don’t have the means or the time to fight frivolous subpoenas.”
Olson said he got lucky and an Idaho attorney represented him pro bono, which led to a judge quashing the subpoena.
If he didn’t find a lawyer to agree to represent him free of charge, Olson worried he would have paid thousands of dollars fighting the subpoena and may have been forced to provide sensitive information – including the identities of sources who spoke with him confidentially – to the very person who was harassing him.
Olson told legislators that passing the shield law would protect confidential sources and prevent similar situations from happening in the future.
“The potential that this individual might have been able to access my confidential sources of information means that they too might have been subject to the same harassment, and we need a shield law to protect them from this happening,” Olson said.
Nobody spoke in opposition to the bill Wednesday.
House Bill 158 heads next to the Idaho House for consideration. If a majority of members of the Idaho House vote to pass the bill, it would be sent to the Idaho Senate for consideration.
Disclosure: Idaho Capital Sun journalists are members of the Idaho Press Club.
Idaho Capital Sun is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Idaho Capital Sun maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Christina Lords for questions: info@idahocapitalsun.com.
