Hawai'i may soon help protect reporters and bloggers from being forced to disclose their sources and notes in court or before state and county governments.

A compromise draft, endorsed yesterday by state Attorney General Mark Bennett and news media attorney Jeff Portnoy, would create a state shield law to help preserve news gathering from government intrusion. Thirty-five states and the District of Columbia have similar laws and a federal shield law is pending before the U.S. Congress.

The draft would cover reporters for traditional media such as newspapers, television and radio as well as bloggers and a new crop of citizen journalists whose work is materially similar and in the public interest.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys would still be able to seek information from reporters and bloggers in felony cases, or in civil actions involving defamation, if they can show substantial evidence that the information is unavailable elsewhere, noncumulative, and necessary to the investigation or defense.

The draft is closer to what the news media had sought than what law enforcement had preferred. But Bennett and Portnoy, after meeting privately yesterday afternoon with state Rep. Blake Oshiro, D-33rd ('Aiea, Halawa Valley, 'Aiea Heights), said they were in agreement.

"I think when you look at the scope of shield laws throughout the country, I think journalists will agree that this is one of the better ones," said Portnoy, who represented The Advertiser and other news media, as well as some bloggers, in the negotiations.

Bennett was successful at lowering the standard for compelling the disclosure of information. Earlier drafts had language that would have required "clear and convincing evidence" the information was necessary, which Bennett argued was inappropriately high for prosecutors investigating murder or other serious crimes.

Bennett fought to ensure that defense attorneys could seek information to protect the constitutional rights of criminal defendants. He also sought an exception for when sources voluntarily consent to the release of documents or other tangible material they have provided to reporters.

Oshiro, the vice chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and state Sen. Brian Taniguchi, D-10th (Manoa, McCully), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary and Labor Committee, will discuss the new draft in conference committee today. Taniguchi may insist the bill expire in three years so lawmakers will have to review its practical application.

Malia Zimmerman, an editor and reporter at Hawai'i Reporter, a conservative-to-libertarian Web site, has been subpoenaed as part of a civil lawsuit related to the Kaloko Dam failure on Kaua'i. Her experience helped start the discussion about a shield law at the Legislature.

"While I am not sure it will help my case, it will help Hawai'i journalists in the future be more willing to practice investigative journalism with less fear of retaliation from powerful people they are investigating," Zimmerman said in an e-mail.

Doug White, a former state House staffer and blogger, said he is dismayed bloggers would have to demonstrate that their work deserves the privilege when traditional reporters would not.

" 'The public interest' is an uncomfortably vague standard and, ultimately, bloggers that fail (in the court's judgment) to meet that standard would be left in the position of either facing contempt or revealing the anonymous source," White said in an e-mail.

"That double standard is going to have, as the lawyers might say, a chilling effect on my work when compared to (traditional reporters)."