The move to give Texas a law to protect journalists and whistle-blowers from vindictive prosecution was stabbed in the heart this week – and in the back. Rep. Debbie Riddle, R-Tomball, called a procedural motion on journalist shield law Senate Bill 966 and stopped the bill dead in its tracks.
It’s not just that; in killing the shield law, she scuppered a concept that has been adopted in the majority of states and is on the way to becoming a federal statute. It’s not just that just about every journalist and editor in the state plus 27 senators have backed this bill and that the only vocal opposition, unsurprisingly, has come from district attorneys. It was the way that it was done. The House didn’t let the bill come to a clean vote, instead taking it down with a bureaucratic point of order about how it was handled in committee. Because then they might have had to explain their opposition to protecting whistle-blowers.
To set the time frame out, the House has had the bill since May 1. It has been out of the House Judiciary Committee since May 17. And now Riddle uses a pen-pusher’s tool to a block yay or nay decision, knowing there is no further chance for debate before session’s end.
This article appears in May 25 • 2007.
