You Can Blog but You Cannot Hide - Essay Example

       In his article “You Can Blog but You Can’t Hide” Eugene Volokh discusses the issue of a journalist’s privilege and considers that if there are such privileges, how far should they extend and by whom, and concludes by stating that once determined then such privileges should be extended to all journalists.

       Volokh begins his article by creating a hypothetical scenario wherein an “I.R.S. agent” (1) commits a “federal felony” (2) by disclosing “a politician’s income tax” (1) information “to a newspaper reporter” (1). While the reporter has a right to make this information public according to the First Amendment, the government is also “entitled to punish the agent” (4) in the protection of a citizen’s rights to privacy.  By providing this scenario, he invokes a ‘catch twenty-two’ type situation in the mind of his reader and a sense of absurdity.  He then further stimulates this sense of the bizarre by stating that in order “to punish the agent” (4), the government must first attain the name of the informant from the reporter and if the journalist chooses not to provide such information under privilege, the informant “may never be caught” (8). At this point, Volokh gains the interest of his reader, enough to induce him/her to read further.

     Having gained the reader’s attention, Volokh then moves from the hypothetical to reality by introducing the Plame Affair, an incident with which most readers would be familiar and would probably have views on, and a more recent incident in Providence, R.I where a reporter “was convicted of criminal contempt” (13) for not naming the person who “gave him a tape of a city official accepting a bribe” (14). By referring to these actual cases, the reader is more likely to agree with his questions: “Should there be a journalist’s privilege? What should its scope be? And who exactly qualifies as a journalist?” (16/17). In other words, he sets the scene and lays the groundwork first before moving to his real contention.

     At this point in his article, Volokh supports his logic with reference to the inconsistencies in government rulings and the fact that the “courts are now split on whether the privileges exist” (25) and that states are divided on the issue with some acknowledging a journalist’s privilege to different degrees, while others “and the federal government” (27) are not. This inference of authority being in such disarray, and his poignant use of language, such as “a cryptic three-paragraph concurrence” (20), “should try to strike a proper balance” (23),  and “the situation is a mess” (29), help to stimulate the reader’s sense of helplessness and vulnerability.

      Volokh then broadens his line of reasoning from a discussion on whether there should be a journalist’s privilege and its scope to who “qualifies as a journalist?” (17) and further expounds the problem by raising the issue of the “hundreds of thousands” (31) of bloggers who write on the internet, “some of which come with a condition of confidentiality” (32/33). By appealing to the First Amendment once again, he asserts that “freedom of the press should apply to people equally” (35) including bloggers.

     This, however, creates another problem, suggests Volokh, because if “everyone is a journalist” (37) and these privileges are granted to everyone, the “mainstream journalists” (39) will suffer. Informants will be able to bypass any risk of reprisal by publishing through “a friend who has a blog and a political ax to grind” (40), rather than a conventional reporter, who “may turn him in” (39). “On the one hand” (43), he claims information from informants assists reporters to “uncover crime and misconduct” (44), and if the journalists had to disclose the names of their informants, the source of information would disappear. “On the other hand” (45), however, he claims that some information is “rightly made legal” (46).

     The “best solution” (47) to this paradox, according to Volokh, may be to adopt the same laws that are acknowledged by “lawyers, psychotherapists, and spouses” (48), which have an appreciation for the safeguarding of confidentiality. He then appears to counteract his own suggestion by claiming that these laws, however, control the privilege by not protecting exchanges that may lead to “crime or fraud” (51) and are, therefore “limited” (51). At this point, the reader may feel confused and not quite sure where Volokh is heading in terms of the answer but he then proposes that if the privileges given to journalists were also limited and laws protected legal disclosure of information but not illegal exposure of information, then it would be the unlawful informants who would be deterred “from coming forward” (59).

    Whatever the outcome or solution, however, Volokh contends that the “rules should be the same” (61) for all – mainstream journalists and bloggers. Whatever the journalist privileges are he reasons, they “should extend to every journalist” (62).

     In his article, Volokh effectively manages to persuade the reader to either take a stance in terms of a journalist’s privilege or at least to become much more informed about the situation.

(words: 830)