What is a shield law?
A shield law provides statutory protection for the “reporters’ privilege” — legal rules which protect journalists against the government requiring them to reveal confidential sources or other information. Sometimes an overzealous prosecutor or law enforcement agency will subpoena a reporter’s notes or the identity of a source to aid an investigation or prosecution. A shield law would allow leakers and sources to feel safe approaching journalists to expose wrongdoing in society, similar to providing priests and psychiatrists the ability to provide some confidentiality to conversations, without concerns that a judge would require their identities or the information to be turned over to the federal government unless under very limited circumstances. The District of Columbia and 49 states have some level of protections from local and state agencies. No statutory protection exists at the federal level.