The Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill last week that would protect journalists from being forced to reveal confidential sources without court approval. Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia already have so-called shield laws for journalists, but Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) believes the federal government can do it better by arbitrarily defining the word “journalist” for the purpose of bestowing First Amendment protection.

The shield bill claims to cover all types of journalists from top TV and newspaper reporters all the way down to unpaid bloggers and student journalists, but again it rests on the principle that the government is deciding what constitutes a journalist. The shield law would cover virtually all types of news media, but what about media yet to be invented? And if the government reserves the power to decide that all bloggers are “shielded,” what’s to stop them from changing their mind and not shielding all or certain bloggers next week or next year?

Another fatal flaw in the Senate proposal is that it relies on federal judges to rule over disputes in which a journalist is called upon to reveal a confidential source. The Justice Department or whatever federal entity pursuing the source merely needs to find a judge or court district favorable to their case. Federal judges are not nearly as impartial as we would like them to be. Journalists deserve protection from hostile forces in pursuit of the truth and in dealing with whistleblowers and confidential sources. Unfortunately, things get confused very fast when that protection is provided by the same government that journalists monitor to keep it honest.