Senator Patrick Leahy says he wants the Senate Judiciary Committee to take up legislation that would protect journalists and their sources.
Leahy chairs the Judiciary Committee. He says his decision to place the Free Flow of Information Act on the Committee's agenda comes after committee members met last week with Attorney General Eric Holder. At that meeting they discussed the Justice Department's guidelines for getting information from the press.
The issue came to the fore this spring when it was revealed that the U.S. Justice Department last year had secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors of The Associated Press.
Free-press groups have raised concerns that such activities will hurt journalists' ability to gather information from confidential sources.
