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Viewers and our readers now have a responsibility that they have never had before, and that is they have to be careful about how they choose their information diet. this is going to be a problem for the rest of our history, and it's a problem in particular for democracies. >> do you see the cbs and cnns of the world as living up to the challenge, or are we way too far behind? >> i think we are living up to the challenge and this program this morning is a great example of that. you just dismantled the nancy pelosi video, and that's what we have to do as journalists. we have to tell the truth, t...

That itself really poses great risks to the first amendment. whatever you think of julian assange, you don't have to recognize him as a journalist to see this indictment could be invoked about journalists who do this every day of their careers. it would criminalize the encouragement of leaks, the gathering of information from a government official who does leak information and then the publication of it. that would be criminalizing journalism. it is the activities that the indictment focuses on. it is good to hear the justice department was expressing concern about intruding on journalism, but...

The police department would put so little intellectual thought into what they were doing in this case and that if they are going to apply that to a freelancer, they could just as easy apply it to me or the other journalists that work at the chronicle. >> ted, tell us the definition of shield law. was it violated in this case? >> brian, the shield law, the california shield law was clearly violated in this case. it's meant to shield the reporter's confidential services and published information of any type. it bars the government from getting search warrants to go storm a reporter's house like ...

The case over the white house taking away acosta's press pass. ted, thanks for being here. >> thank you, brian. i'm glad to be with you. >> what makes this historic, this use of the espionage act to challenge and prosecute assange? >> this is the first time the government has ever invoked the espionage act to go after someone who received classified information and then disseminated it to the public. it's really been a rarely used statute. but when it's been used, it's been used to go after people who engaged in espionage or the government officials who leaked the information. that raises trou...

Has been around for a long time. tell us the proper use of the espionage act would be. >> a classic example would be if a foreign government or an individual here in the united states stole national security information and then gave it to a hostile government. and, so, that's more along the lines of what you see in the russian interference situation. you know, it is a criminal statute meant to go after hostile acts against the government, the stealing of information and the use of it to attack the united states. but what happens in journalism is journalists go to government officials, talk to...