San Francisco sunshine panel backs federal shield law

From Richard Knee, member of the NorCal SPJ FOI Committee

On a motion from one of its two members serving at the pleasure of SPJ's Northern California Chapter, the panel that monitors San Francisco City Hall's compliance with local and state open-government laws voiced support Tuesday, Nov. 28, for a federal law upholding the First Amendment rights of journalists and news outlets to protect source identities and to keep possession of unpublished/unaired materials.

The resolution by the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force also echoed the city Board of Supervisors' sentiment supporting freelance blogger/videographer Joshua Wolf, who is being wrongfully imprisoned for refusing to let a federal grand jury have unedited footage of a July 2005 anarchists'
demonstration in San Francisco, and it urged the board and Mayor Gavin Newsom to express support of a federal shield law to San Francisco's representatives in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.

The motion on the resolution came from member Richard Knee, who joined SPJ in 1972 and serves on the Society's and the NorCal Chapter's Freedom of Information committees. Knee has also spoken out in Wolf's behalf as acting Journalism Division chair of the National Writers Union's Bay Area Chapter.

The task force backed the resolution, 6-2, despite advice from a deputy city attorney that it might go beyond the panel's specified duties and authority. The other SPJ NorCal-nominated member, Erica Craven, voted for the resolution. Craven also is on the SPJ NorCal FOI Committee, and is an attorney with the San Francisco law firm of Levy Ram & Olson.

Knee argued that the resolution was not a policy action; that the task force has a First Amendment right to express its opinion; and that there is sunshine applicability because it is possible that government entities will try to seize unpublished or unaired material to prevent the information contained therein from reaching the public.