Supreme Court decision is a victory for whistleblowers and the media

Were media lawyers asleep at the wheel when a major whistleblower case came through the Supreme Court this term? While all eyes were turned on Jim Risen and efforts to revise Justice Department policies on when it subpoenas reporters, were we missing the potential for a major precedent affecting sources? At first glance, the ruling in January in favor of federal air marshal Robert MacLean , who leaked information to an MSNBC reporter, looks unremarkable, and it received little attention from the media lawers at a time when the focus was on Risen. The crux of the Court's decision was that a Transportation Security Administration ban on the unauthorized disclosure of sensitive security information was a regulation, not a law.



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