"In a 118-page set of opinions, two members of a three-judge panel for the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va. — the court whose decisions cover the Pentagon and the C.I.A. — ruled that the First Amendment provides no protection to reporters who receive unauthorized leaks from being forced to testify against the people suspected of leaking to them."
Especially seeing as there is no such thing a leak that isn't unauthorized. It seems another step in hiding information from the public because would-be leakers now need to worry that the reporter they give information to would be forced to reveal their source.
There, to my knowledge, have never been codified protections for journalists -- just standards.
I didn't believe this so I decided to take to Google...turns out there doesn't appear to be any formal laws. There is section 8 of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (http://www.iachr.org/declaration.htm) but that means nothing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller#Contempt_of_cour...
United States v. United States District Court, 407 U.S. 297 (1972) [1] -- particularly relevant in the area of domestic surveillance -- disagrees with you.
[1] http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/407/297/case.html
This is in line with what we have seen before. The "war on the whistle blower".
Next we'll see attempts to make it illegal to publish classified information after it has been received (or maybe it is already - see the Wikileaks disaster). In that case the reporter and the news outlet itself would be held responsible.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
It explicitly didn't consider foreign intelligence surveillance power, and FISA was adopted after it to limit domestic surveillance using the foreign intelligence excuse, which largely reduced the then-building pressure on the Court to resolve that issue. The loosening of FISA under the FISA Amendments Act and the subsequent mass surveillance means that the pressure is likely to return.
I wouldn't say US v. US District Court is a dead letter now. I would say that we are reaching the point where how the Supreme Court decides the issue it deferred then will determine whether it becomes a dead letter.