The resolution today, "In the United States, a journalist’s right to shield confidential sources ought to be protected by the first amendment," asks a specific question of the affirmative: how often is a journalist who shields confidential sources justified in doing so? My value today will be that of the universal truth; that is, to affirm the resolution would be to prove that the concept of a journalist protecting confidential sources is always something that ought to occur within the context of the United States. As the negative, I will prove that the universal principle is not true; that a journalist should not always have a right to shield confidential sources that would be protected by the first amendment. Freedom of press is not and should not be a ticket to anarchy. The negative’s value in this debate is justice. If a journalist decides that keeping sources confidential is a right that, by being protected, is above all else, than our idea of justice is grossly misunderstood.

CONTENTION 1: If a journalist has a protected right to shield confidential sources, the ability of the public to fully understand stories given by these sources is diminished. Lies flourish in the dark. Certainly we can read these stories provided by journalists, yet we can never discover the source for the sake of his or her confidentiality. In the so-called "Trailer Park Conspiracy" that involved those who were involved in the Oklahoma City Bombing, this group’s confidential sources told these anarchic journalists that the Oklahoma City Federal Building was a horrible re-education center to brainwash people. This belief, which is completely false, was provided by confidential sources and could not therefore be disproved because we didn’t know who was providing this horribly false information.

CONTENTION 2: When a source for a story is a criminal, there ought to be no right for the source to be protected for the sake of the societal welfare. Allow me to provide another example. Suppose that we have a kidnapper who isn’t getting his way in the negotiations and his ransom demands are failing. He decides to share with a journalist that the person he has kidnapped is still alive so that the hostage’s family knows he’s alive and will thus pay for the kidnapper to let him go. If the journalist agrees to keep this kidnapper as a confidential source, he gets a great news story but the hostage’s life is still endanger. At this point any logical person would agree that the journalist has no right to keep this source confidential and thus he has no right to shield the confidential kidnapper. Life is clearly more important than a nice story. Certainly the journalist may decide to reveal this source, and in doing so he too realizes that a journalist should not have the right to shield confidential sources protected because morality demands that sometimes this cannot be so.

In closing, we must see that the universal principle of a journalist having a right to shield confidential sources protected by the first amendment cannot be affirmed. This idea cannot ever be fully accepted as always true, and thus we can’t accept it as fully valid today. Sometimes, there are some items more valuable and more precious than tomorrow’s headlines. For these reasons, I negate the resolution. I will now move onto my opponent’s case.