The Justice Department will meet Thursday with the head of a nonprofit journalism group that helped the Obama administration write media guidelines, as part of the government’s effort to revisit the rules it uses when deciding whether to subpoena reporters who receive classified information.
The Justice Department last issued new guidelines on journalist subpoenas in 2015, following a discussion coordinated by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press with members of the news media, known as the News Media Dialogue Group.
Reporters Committee Executive Director Bruce Brown was part of that coordination effort in 2015, and is part of it now, he told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday.
“We were involved in coordinating the dialogue with [Attorney General Eric] Holder when he was there, and then with Attorney General [Loretta] Lynch,” he said. “And we are playing a similar role here.”
Brown said he will be meeting with the on Wednesday to “help with the logistics for the first meeting, trying to get the list together from the media side and who might participate.”
Brown said the Reporters Committee had asked the Justice Department for more time to assemble participants from the media group side, as well as its agenda for when the full group meets.
A Justice Department spokesperson said Wednesday’s meeting is just for planning purposes and has “no substantive agenda,” and did not elaborate on what specific regulations in the guidelines are being looked at by the department for when the full group eventually meets.
On Friday, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told reporters that the review of the Justice Department’s subpoena policy was part of a broader “fresh look” at its attempt to crackdown on the leaking of classified information.
“We’re responding to issues that have been raised by career prosecutors and agents” on how to investigate leaks of classified information that are prosecutable, Rosenstein said. Also on Friday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the department is reviewing policies “affecting media subpoenas.”
Rosenstein said he had a meeting with the News Media Dialogue Group scheduled for this week to “consult” with its members on the possible guidelines changes.
Brown anticipated that Wednesday’s meeting will be successful in “getting a group together” and “then trying to figure out the agenda.” The full group will likely meet sometime after Labor Day, he said.
Brown said that it is “premature” to comment on what provisions in the guidelines the Justice Department is looking to revise “until we get over there.”
Under the current guidelines, Brown said the Reporters Committee has “not heard that there have been problems” and “that they have been working well.”
In 2013, the FBI obtained the phone records and emails of Associated Press and Fox News journalists in an effort to crackdown on media leaks. After a backlash from that event, the Justice Department released new media guidelines in 2015 on when federal prosecutors can issue subpoenas and warrants to journalists when seeking information, especially as it pertains to third-party records such as emails.
The new guidelines mandated that the attorney general would have to approve any subpoenas and warrants for journalists, and that the journalists would almost always be notified before the government sought their records.
Courtney Radsch, the advocacy director for the Committee to Protect Journalists, told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday the idea that the Justice Department simply wants to look at revising the guidelines “chilling.”
