Protect Reporters From Exploitative State Spying Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding and for her very distinguished and passionate advocacy for civil liberties and civil rights. I thank her for her excellent management of this legislation. I also thank the floor leader on the minority side for his excellent words on the legislation, as well.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of my bill, H.R. 4330, the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying Act, or the PRESS Act, which I introduced with Congressmen Lieu and Yarmuth. It is a close successor to the bill that then-Congressman Mike Pence got passed in the House in the 110th Congress by a lopsided vote of 398-21.

Given that the bill passed unanimously in the Judiciary Committee earlier this year, I am very hopeful that this is the Congress in which we can get it done.

Our Founders insisted that the American people must have the means to acquire the truth about their own government, their society, and their world. Those ``who mean to be their own governors,'' said Madison, ``must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.''

Newspapers were critical, a form of continuing public education about government and about society. Thomas Jefferson said: ``If it were left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.''

The great Tom Paine not only defended but demonstrated the power of the pen as the people's weapon against political tyranny. His sensationally successful pamphlet ``Common Sense'' argued the central importance of free speech and free press to the survival of political democracy.

In theory, the specific command in the First Amendment that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press was unnecessary because press freedom would already, by definition, be subsumed under the freedom of speech. The Framers insisted upon protecting the structurally distinctive role that the press plays as a watchdog institution in a representative democratic society.

Not everyone can go to congressional hearings or State legislative sessions or county council meetings late into the night. Not all of us can travel to Ukraine to uncover Russian war crimes against the people there or go to Afghanistan to see what it means to have theocratic tyranny oppressing the people. Not everyone can personally go get the Pentagon Papers or break the Watergate scandal or penetrate crime and drug trafficking rings or see with their own eyes how climate change is ravaging the Louisiana coast or Pakistan. As citizens of the United States, we are all equally implicated and affected by these developments, and we are all equally invested in obtaining the truth about them. This is why we need professional journalists and newspapers.

Yet, reporters in our country face violence, threats, intimidation, and even jail time just for doing their jobs, providing news and information.

The Committee to Protect Journalists reported that journalists in the United States faced unprecedented attacks in 2020. At least 110 reporters were arrested or criminally charged in relation to their reporting, and around 300 were assaulted in 2020 alone.

Many families in my State of Maryland are still reeling from the mass shooting at the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis, which took the lives of five different journalists and injured several others in 2018.

Lots of reporters face harsh legal consequences just for reporting and then faithfully maintaining the confidentiality of sources.

One journalist who faced repercussions simply for doing his job I know well--Brian Karem, one of my constituents. In 1990 and 1991, he went to jail four different times to protect confidential sources while working as a TV reporter. The last time, he went to jail for nearly 2 weeks while the Supreme Court considered his case, and he was only spared a long sentence when his source moved from Texas to California and, no longer fearing for her life, came forward.

Now more than ever, we need to make good on the constitutional promise of a free press by establishing a Federal shield law to protect journalists against government overreach and prosecutorial abuses that may occur from one administration to the next.

The PRESS Act is an update of the Free Flow of Information Act that I introduced with the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Jordan), the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, in the 115th Congress. It will prevent Federal law enforcement from being able to obtain information from covered journalists through their work devices and accounts, as well as their personal devices and accounts. It will also prevent government officials from conducting an end run around these prohibitions by precluding them from seeking third-party communications held by communications services, except in narrow and carefully cabined exceptional instances.

America favors shield laws to protect the media because our people know that the press is not the enemy of the people. The press is the people's best friend.

Forty-nine States and Washington, D.C., have already passed State shield laws or adopted some kind of reporter's privilege of their own. What better evidence could we have that the American people want a free and aggressive press to expose corruption and safeguard democracy?

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Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I fervently hope that my colleagues on both sides of the aisle--indeed, every Member of the House of Representatives--will rise to support this bill, the successor to our 2017 bipartisan bill and the successor to the bill that then- Congressman, now-Vice President Mike Pence navigated to victory in the House on a vote of 398-21 15 years ago.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her indulgence.

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