[mschuster91]

The general problem is power imbalance. Imagine I'm a journalist and want to report on crimes committed by a big company, or the government. Then I get a letter "you're on our radar, notice that we have a decently financed legal team and believe reporting to be a violation of <long list>". Do I continue or do I drop the case?

The only ones that can actually pull through now are media powerhouses with their own legal team (WaPo, NYT) - but small operations like local papers, small radio stations, bloggers, they rather retreat than to lose their existence.

And it's not just about the money for lawyers that the losing party ends up with - it's also a huge loss of time and in case of actual criminal accusations (e.g. libel, or fraud if I go undercover as a journalist) the risk of jail time or a criminal record.

Journalists need better financing and the legal system a reform. As long as the standards of decent journalism are adhered it should not be a crime in any way or even carry the risk of that.

[pessimizer]

> The only ones that can actually pull through now are media powerhouses with their own legal team (WaPo, NYT)

And these are large organizations that also have financial relationships with and ownership of the big companies and governments that need to be reported on. WaPo is an extreme example of links to massive corporations, obscenely wealthy oligarchs, and heavy government contracting, but similar can be said about other large media companies (the number of which could be counted on your fingers.)

They're not going to save us from anything.

[ryanlol]

I fully appreciate that it can be very hard for smaller operations to deal with legal threats, but is this really a legislative problem as rahuldottech suggests?

I have a really hard time imagining any reasonable legislative solution to this problem.

[deogeo]

Abuse of the legal system is definitely a legislative problem - the law has to work reasonably in the real world, not in some idealized, frictionless vacuum.

As for a solution - non-prejudicial defensive trials (I made that phrase up). Under this system, if someone sues you, you can at first ignore it. You'd get assigned a public defender, that would try to do a reasonably acceptable job defending you. You could cooperate with this defender, or ignore him. This defender will conduct a sort of mock trial. If you're found not guilty in this trial, then the lawsuit can't proceed, and you've lost no time or money. Only if you're found guilty (or infringing, or whatever outcome you don't like), can it then proceed to a real trial.

A sort of enhanced filter on whether a lawsuit has merit.

[ryanlol]

The legal system wasn’t even involved here, it’s just a letter.

What you’re proposing would make civil suits vastly more expensive, making them even less accessible for the little guy.

[deogeo]

The very real threat of the legal system was used, backed up by the terrifying financial reality of a good legal defense. You can't honestly say that means the legal system wasn't involved. An easy test is - if the system were different, could the threat be less severe?

And I don't see why a preliminary ruling would mean 'vastly' more expensive - you can mostly re-use your work in the real case. And if it turns out to be without merit, you've saved yourself a lot of money. In the very, very worst case scenario, this system would cost 2x as much for the offense, and be vastly cheaper for the defense side. Definitely preferable to the current reality, where you can be forced to spend an arbitrary amount on legal defense.

[mschuster91]

I have actually proposed just that in my last sentence: blanket whitelist journalist work, similar to whistleblower protection.

Combined with real punitive fines (for corporations, let's say 10% of gross yearly income before any deductions and for government bodies removal from office and loss of electability for ten years for the person at the top) fot intimidating journalists this should work out pretty well.

Additionally the amount of lawyer fees that can be awarded to the losing side should be capped. In Germany you're free to charge your client whatever you want as a lawyer (there are minimums to prevent dumping though)... but if your client wins, your client will only get a (highly capped) amount of these costs from the losing side and be on the hook for the rest.

[barry-cotter]

Journalists aren’t special. They’re not a protected class and their job isn’t sacred. Freedom of the press meant freedom to use a printing press, not membership of a profession.

Whistleblower protection doesn’t exist in practice.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/16/whistleblowe...

> Since Barack Obama entered the White House in 2009, his government has waged a war against whistleblowers and official leakers. On his watch, there have been eight prosecutions under the 1917 Espionage Act – more than double those under all previous presidents combined.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_whistleblowers

> Joshua Wilson

> Wilson and Major Jeremy Gordon exposed the malfunctioning oxygen system on board the F-22 Raptor systems that were causing pilots to become disoriented, first to superior officers and then to CBS 60 Minutes. As a result, Wilson's superiors cancelled his promotion to Major, took him off flying duty and threatened to take away his wings. Wilson was also forced out of his desk job at Air Combat Command. No such actions faced Major Gordon.

> Carmen Segarra

> Carmen Segarra discovered that Goldman Sachs did not have a conflict of interest policy when it advised El Paso Corp. on selling itself to Kinder Morgan, a company which Goldman Sachs owned a $4 billion stake. She was forced by her superiors at the Federal Reserve to falsify her report, but stated that her professional view of the situation had not changed. She was shortly thereafter fired.[216] The New York Federal Reserve disputes that she was fired in retaliation.

> John Crane

> Crane built up the DoD IG office over his 25 years there to become the "gold standard" within the government but had his career destroyed for his support of government whistleblowers. Edward Snowden went public rather than reporting within the system due to severe reprisal against earlier NSA whistleblowers.

[ryanlol]

How do you decide who is and isn’t a journalist? Can journalists really do no wrong?