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(#7) Shield Laws & Obama

Regarding shield laws, I find it funny how Obama had publicly stated he supported increased legislation for shield laws back in 08. If I had one criticism for Obama, it was his administration's tactics for dealing with journalists**. Obama had nine subpoenas issued during his presidency as opposed to four in the previous thirty years total. (to clarify: his administration used the Espionage Act not to prosecute spies but to go after government officials who talked to journalists) According to a New York Times reporter, James Risen, his administration spied on reporters by monitoring their phone records, labeled one journalist an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal case for simply doing reporting and issued subpoenas to other reporters to try to force them to reveal their sources and testify in criminal cases. (2016)
To me, journalists should almost never have to reveal their sources, except for dire circumstances, which may not even include some instances of national security being leaked, such as with Snowden. (If we can't defend our journalists when writing about national security, what are we fighting for?) Taking into account that spilling the beans on your sources would cultivate fear in sources/cause a chilling effect because sources won't feel safe or compelled to provide information. Basically, taking on sources = bad for the public because it upsets a critical balance, a delicate relationship between the journalist and his/her source. While for the most part, if you make a promise of confidentiality, I don't think you should break it, I would agree with Justice Stewart's three-part test in his dissent of Branzburg v. Hayes (1972) that having a qualified test makes more sense if nothing else. 
Q: Can journalists be prosecuted under espionage statute?

**The U.S. government set a new record for withholding FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests. According to Associated Press in 2016, in more than one in six cases (or 129,825 times) government searchers said they came up empty-handed that year. (2016) People who asked for records under the law received censored files or nothing in 77 percent of requests, which also set a record.

Sources: 
Bridis, T., Gillum J. (2016) US gov’t sets record for failures to find files when asked. Associated Press. Retrieved from https://apnews.com/697e3523003049cdb0847ecf828afd62/us-govt-sets-record-failures-find-files-when-asked
Risen, J. (2016) If Donald Trump Targets Journalists, Thank Obama. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/30/opinion/sunday/if-donald-trump-targets-journalists-thank-obama.html

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