Legislation that would create a federal shield law protecting journalists from being forced to reveal their confidential sources – the Protect Reporters From Exploitative State Spying Act – is facing a dim future after an attempt in the Senate on Tuesday to expeditiously pass the bill failed.
The bill is “definitely on life support at this point,” according to a Senate staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly on the matter.
The bill, known as the Press Act, unanimously passed in the House in January but has been stalled in the Senate Judiciary Committee. The legislation has been championed by a coalition of press advocacy groups and news organizations that view it as essential for safeguarding the use of confidential sources in public interest reporting.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, heads to a vote on the Senate floor on Nov. 14. Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post
While most states provide protections for journalists against being compelled to reveal confidential sources, there is no such protection on the federal level.
When Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, one of the bill’s sponsors, tried to pass the bill by unanimous consent on the Senate floor on Tuesday, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, a longtime critic of the bill, objected, calling it a “threat to national security” and “the biggest giveaway to the liberal press in American history.”
After Cotton’s objection, Wyden acknowledged that the maneuver had failed but stressed that he would not abandon the effort.
“I understand that we don’t have unanimous consent today,” he said on the Senate floor. “I think it’s unfortunate. I think America would be stronger and freer if we would be passing this legislation today. But we will be back and I hope we can work with [Cotton] to get his support.”
The bill is not technically dead. In the next 23 days, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-New York, could attach the bill to a piece of year-end legislation or introduce it in a stand-alone fashion.
But now that Cotton has made it clear that he will seek to block the bill, the majority leader seems unlikely to do so and potentially make it harder to pass a broader piece of legislation.
But that isn’t stopping some press advocacy organizations that have lobbied Schumer to try again by calling for a full vote on the bill.
“We need more than speeches about the PRESS Act’s importance. We need action,” Seth Stern, director of advocacy for the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said in a statement Wednesday. “Senate Democrats had all year to move this bipartisan bill and now time is running out. Leader Schumer needs to get the PRESS Act into law – whether by attaching it to a year-end legislative package or bringing it to the floor on its own – even if it means shortening lawmakers’ holiday break.”
“We’ve got to keep our foot on the pedal and get it across the finish line,” Gabe Rottman, policy director for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, told The Washington Post.
In October, a coalition of more than 100 news media and press rights organizations sent letters to the House and Senate urging passage of the bill.
But the measure took on greater urgency for some advocates after the election of Donald Trump, who has referred to journalists as “the enemy of the people.” Trump could seek to undo some of the Biden administration’s actions to protect the independence of the press, such as the Department of Justice’s revision in 2021 of guidelines to greatly limit the use of subpoena power to compel disclosures from journalists. “If they go away and there’s no Press Act, protections are exceedingly weak,” Rottman said.
“I can’t think of a time when it was more important to pass the [Press] Act,” First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams told The Post in November. “They need sweeping new statutory protection now.”
One journalist who could have benefited from the protections of such a law is former CBS News correspondent Catherine Herridge, who in February was held in civil contempt by U.S. District Court Judge Christopher R. Cooper and ordered to pay $800 per day unless she revealed her sources for stories she wrote in 2017 about Chinese American scientist Yanping Chen. There are some protections for reporters against disclosure in D.C. Circuit Court case law, but they are weaker than what a federal shield law would provide.
Herridge has contested the ruling and is waiting for a federal appeals court to decide whether to affirm the district court’s decision.
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