id="article-body" class="row" section="article-body"> 33 States plus the District of Columbia have some form of shield law to protect the forced disclosure of information obtained by journalists, but there are no such protections when it comes to federal court. That may be change soon, but will the law be strong enough to actually protect journalists or will its broad exceptions do more to hurt press freedoms than help them?

The House of Representatives is expected to vote on The Free Flow of Information Act of 2007 (HR 2102) later today. When the bill was first introduced in May, it was not without its weaknesses, but it's broad definition of who was covered under the bill and its limited exceptions made for a robust bill that I could easily support.

By August the bill had been amendedto refine who would and wouldn't qualify as a journalist. The new language stated that only those who who derive "financial gain or livelihood" from their journalistic activity would be covered