Good news on the Shield Law front over the past week.

On Wednesday (7/17), a bipartisan group of senators led by New York Democrat Charles Schumer and South Carolina Republican Lindsay Graham said they’re going to push for a Shield Law that enshrines revisions to Justice Department policies announced by Attorney General Eric Holder on July 12.

Holder’s revisions to DOJ guidelines would make it harder for prosecutors to obtain journalists’ phone records without advance notice.

The bill Schumer, Lindsay and their colleagues announced Wednesday would go a bit further, ensuring that an impartial judge reviews government attempts to compel journalists and news agencies or third parties, such as phone companies and internet providers, before the Justice Department tries to obtain them.

“In many ways, our bill is tougher than the new [DOJ] guidelines,” Schumer said at a press conference, “but the DOJ has smartly proposed new ideas that would offer additional protections to journalists while carefully balancing that need against national security.”

Holder’s policy changes came after various journalism groups, including SPJ, voiced concerns about the Justice Department’s seizure of the AP’s phone records and a Fox News reporter’s emails. In a letter to Holder in June, SPJ expressed serious concerns that the DOJ wasn’t following its own guidelines for dealing with demands for information from journalists in the government’s investigations of leaks.

After meeting with and hearing from a slew of journalism groups, Holder surprised me and actually strengthened the guidelines.

Of particular note was the Attorney General’s statement of principles: “As an initial matter, it bears emphasis that it has been and remains the Department’s policy that members of the news media will not be subject to prosecution based solely on newsgathering activities.”

The policy changes Holder outlined seek to strike “the appropriate balance between two vital interests,” he said in his report to the President: “protecting the American people by pursuing those who violate their oaths through unlawful disclosures of information and safeguarding the essential role of a free press in fostering government accountability and an open society.”

Schumer, Lindsay and shield bill co-sponsors Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., Jon Tester, D-Mont., Roy Blount, R-Mo., and Jonny Isakson, R-Ga., echoed that sentiment in Wednesday’s press conference announcing their intent to submit a “tougher bill” than either the previous bill that languished in the Senate three years ago or Holder’s revised guidelines.

“We’ve struck the right balance here between national security and protecting those who cover government,” Graham said after noting that “guidelines are not gonna cut it in the 21^st century.

“We need a statute, a law that transcends administrations.”

Other societies wish they had the kind of reporting on government that Americans have, Graham said.

“We have it, we need to protect it, and quite frankly, cherish it,” he said.

Amen.

Our SPJ colleagues in Colorado have produced a video that I’d like to bring to your attention.

It’s a 60-second valentine to the power of journalism called “This I Know.”

The video was born out of the frustration many of us felt after coming so tantalizing close to passage of a national Shield Law for journalists in late 2010.

But then came Wikileaks and the bipartisan support we had won came unglued. At the end of that debate you might have thought that the whole point of the Shield law was to deal with Julian Assange.

Lost in that debate was the simple fact of the people whom a Shield Law was meant to protect, hard-working journalists whose work shines a light on those dark or unnoticed corners of society. It’s work that vital to the health of a democracy.

So last spring, a group of volunteers set out to remind people of the real beneficiaries of a Shield Law – not just the journalists who produce this valuable work – but the readers, viewers and listeners who depend upon it.

To drive home this point, we assembled a cast of mostly non-journalists. They included a lawyer, a hospice director, a public relations professional, a bartender, a gadfly and a law student.

The only journalist in the bunch was a 16-year-old crusading editor of a high school newspaper.

The one common denominator of the group was their appreciation of the work that journalists do.

Under the direction of my SPJ colleague Cynthia Hessin and the camera work of my friend Jerome Ryden, we gathered one Saturday morning in the Denver studio of Rocky Mountain PBS.

They took turns reading lines that began with the refrain, “Because of a journalist…”

“Because of a journalist…I know who used steroids in baseball.”

“Because of a journalist…I know who covered up the Watergate break-in.”

“Because of a journalist…I know about the torture at Abu Ghraib.”

I’ll be the first to admit that this is not a slick video. The people speaking these lines are clearly not polished actors or spokespeople.

They are just regular folks who happen to believe that the work we do matters.

That’s why I screened this video on the night I took my oath as SPJ president in New Orleans.

That’s also why I’m asking chapter leaders if they would consider screening this video at the start of their next SPJ event or posting it to their chapter website.

Will any of this move us one bit closer to a national Shield Law? Not likely.

But in these tough times, I think it’s important to remind people of the value journalism has to the people who rely upon us for the work we do.

I’m arming myself with some super-thick skin for the slings and arrows sure to follow. These words will result in my being called names from “sympathizer” to “traitor” to “un-American” and worse.

But I can’t stay silent any more.

For those of you who disagree — and isn’t it wonderful that we can do so freely and (hopefully) with mutual respect? — I will make it clear from the beginning that this blog post is my personal opinion, not a Society statement.

I just can’t stand by without lamenting what I see as a dangerous slippery slope that many of us are sidestepping in the name of patriotism or political correctness.

Julian Assange is no more a spy than my 77-year-old lifelong stay-at-home mother. I may disagree with his methods and philosophy, and I certainly would never publish information that would risk life or country. I know of no professional journalist who would. I am no apologist for Assange or WikiLeaks. As a journalist I have deep concerns about motivation, as I do for every source on every story.

But to call for his arrest? His execution? To charge another country’s citizen with treason to the United States? First it’s Assange, next it’s the New York Times, next it’s you or me, if we don’t toe the line on an increasingly McCarthyistic spiraling chain of events.

I’m a patriotic citizen. I’ve missed few elections in my adult life. I believe democracy represents the best governmental model. But we only feed the conspiracy theorists when a) a Swedish prosecutor drops two rape cases for lack of evidence; b) word leaks of the impending WikiLeaks data disclosures; c) a prosecutor in a different Swedish jurisdiction whose biography (according to press reports) says she specializes in “extradition work” resurrects the rape charges; d) the UK’s Independent reports “informal discussions have already taken place between U.S. and Swedish officials” over the possibility of extraditing Assange.

Under what charges? If treason doesn’t hold up, our sage leaders have come up with a cleverly worded proposed new law, the Securing Human Intelligence and Enforcing Lawful Dissemination Act. I’m sure it’s a coincidence for the acronym to be the SHIELD Act. Not to be confused with the barely-on-life-support proposed federal Shield law that journalism groups including SPJ have been pushing hard the past two years. It would grant reporters the right to protect anonymous sources except on matters that endanger national security. That bill, passed overwhelmingly by voice vote in the House, has twisted in the wind after select senators refused to allow a vote on their floor. Now rather than a shield law to protect journalists and their sources, we get a proposed SHIELD Act that threatens our work and workers instead.

Make no mistake. The SHIELD Act, which labels anyone who disseminates classified information as a “transnational threat”, doesn’t just target the Julian Assanges of this world. That language includes anyone, source or journalist included, who publishes information the government classified, even with no national or personal security threat. Elsberg, Woodward, Bernstein and Bradlee? All criminals. Some of those involved with the Valerie Plame mess might watch their backs. As should thousands of reporters and publishers who challenge some of what the government classifies merely to avoid embarrassment. And the thousands of bloggers who then re-publish. Even grandma who then emails her family repeating such information could be guilty of dissemination.

I’m reminded of Pastor Martin Niemoller’s oft-quoted passage regarding those who watched silently as the Nazis rose to power in the 1930s and 1940s. “They came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for me and by that time no one was left to speak up.”

I’m speaking up. Already the SHIELD Act has expanded the list of classified information it would be considered criminal to publish. That list is sure to widen with time and with silence. The only shield this law would provide is one for government officials to hide increasing amounts of information from its citizens.

Mark as “Exhibit One” Sen. Joe Lieberman’s call on the Justice Department to investigate the New York Times for publishing articles based on the leaked cables. The Senate Homeland Security chairman called the stories “at least an act of bad citizenship” and possibly “a crime.” The only crime would have occurred if the Times had not vetted, confirmed, and then published information in the public interest that doesn’t endanger lives. That would have been bad citizenship and an abdication of the paper’s duty to serve as a watchdog, as set forth by our Founding Fathers.

I found it the ultimate in Orwellian-style double-speak to hear the same State Department spokesman who denounced Assange one day, announce the next day that the United States would be hosting the 2011 UNESCO World Press Freedom Day, claiming an “enduring commitment” to “the free flow of information in this digital age.” In the same breath, P.J. Crowley said, “New media has empowered citizens around the world” and “We are concerned about the determination of some governments to censor and silence individuals.”

That only works if the majority of individuals stay silent themselves.

Hagit Limor, an investigative reporter at WCPO-TV, is the 2010-11 SPJ President.