First Amendment rights are actual RIGHTs BY LAW.
When a reporter presents a story to their Editor they often explain about their sources. The discussion ensures from Wikipedia.
From Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_of_sources
"The protection of sources, sometimes also referred to as the confidentiality of sources or in the U.S. as the reporter's privilege, is a right accorded to journalists under the laws of many countries, as well as under international law. It prohibits authorities, including the courts, from compelling a journalist to reveal the identity of an anonymous source for a story. The right is based on a recognition that without a strong guarantee of anonymity, many would be deterred from coming forward and sharing information of public interests with journalists. As a result, problems such as corruption or crime might go undetected and unchallenged, to the ultimate detriment of society as a whole. In spite of any such legal protections, the pervasive use of traceable electronic communications by journalists and their sources provides governments with a tool to determine the origin of information.[1] In the United States, the federal government legally contends that no such protection exists for journalists.[2][3]"
Footnote #2:
Secrecy News
"There is No Reporter’s Privilege, Leak Prosecutors Insist"
Posted on Feb.29, 2012 in Secrecy by Steven Aftergood
https://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/2012/02/no_privilege/
In CRIMINAL proceedings:
"“There is no ‘reporter’s privilege’ that shields the identity of confidential sources in good-faith criminal proceedings,” prosecutors reiterated in a new pre-trial brief in the case of former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, who is accused of leaking classified information to author and New York Times reporter James Risen. Consequently, they said, Mr. Risen should not be permitted to invoke such a privilege to shield his source."
Footnote #3:
"Timeline: Leak Investigations That Have Ensnared Journalists"
The government has been aggressively pursuing those who disclose secrets, and the reporters they talk to, for a decade.
By Shane Harris on May 21, 2013
"You’d be forgiven for not believing it, but there was a time when seizing a reporter’s private e-mails and accusing him in court documents of possibly aiding and abetting a criminal conspiracy for doing his job would have been unthinkable.
By now, we’re well acquainted with the Obama administration’s unprecedented prosecutions of suspected leakers, and how that pursuit has ensnared journalists and jeopardized their ability to protect their sources’ identities. But this anti-leaking zeal didn’t begin in 2009 with the inauguration of Barack Obama.
The course was set in 2003, when an influential appeals court judge opined that journalists’ supposedly legal right not to reveal their sources, known as “reporters’ privilege,” was complete bunk. The privilege—or at least lawyers’ perception of it—was the constitutional cornerstone that backed up journalists’ pledges never to reveal the names of people who talked to them in confidence. But now that the legitimacy of the privilege was questioned, prosecutors were emboldened to acquire reporters’ confidential information using tactics they wouldn’t have dared try in a prior era."
Again, in a CRIMINAL proceeding. If we need to do so, we will disclose our sources to put Tweety Twump in jail.
"It's Happening—News Groups Are Being Barred From White House Press Briefings"
Kevin DrumFeb. 24, 2017 2:54 PM
The media and news outlets should simply stop reporting on anything Tweety says or does. IGNORE Tweety's tweets, his press conferences, his speeches, his meetings, his signing shows . . . IGNORE the President totally.
"From CNN:
CNN and other news organizations were blocked Friday from a White House press briefing....The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Politico were also excluded from the meeting, which is known as a gaggle and is less formal than the televised Q-and-A session in the White House briefing room.
The Associated Press and Time magazine boycotted the briefing because of how it was handled. The White House Correspondents Association is protesting.
The conservative media organizations Breitbart News, The Washington Times and One America News Network were allowed in.
A few days ago, there was some talk about whether Trump would slow-walk federal disaster relief for the Oroville Dam area. As it turned out, he didn't, but the possibility was taken seriously for a while.
This is what makes the Trump presidency so unpredictable. No modern president would even think of taking revenge on a state that voted against him by refusing disaster aid. No modern president would dream of evicting news outlets from a press briefing because they had criticized him. No modern president would lie about easily checkable facts on a routine basis. No modern president would loudly cite every positive bit of economic news as a personal triumph. No modern president since Nixon would casually ask the FBI to take its side in an ongoing investigation.
It's not that modern presidents couldn't do these things. They just didn't. And we all came to assume that none of them would. The technical machinery of government—collecting data, hiring staffers, working by the rules—would be left alone to operate in a professional and impartial way. But that's no longer something we can assume.
Trump is going to find lots of things like this. Things that nobody ever thought of before, but aren't illegal. Or maybe just slightly illegal. And he's going to use them to demagogue his enemies and take revenge on people who badmouth him. Fasten your seat belts."
