State Sen. Brian Taniguchi, D-10th (Mänoa, McCully), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary and Labor Committee, asked news media and law enforcement leaders to meet by Friday to see if there is potential for a compromise on a proposed shield law for reporters.

The main issues in dispute:

*How to cover bloggers or citizen journalists. The state Attorney General's office believes the bill is so broad it would protect bloggers, people who pass out leaflets, or one-time posters on Internet Web sites.

*Whether a three-part balancing test for disclosure of information should apply to civil or criminal cases. The test requires the party seeking the disclosure to show by convincing evidence that the information is unavailable despite the exhaustion of all reasonable alternatives, is noncumulative, and is necessary and relevant to the case.

*Whether there should be an exception for law enforcement investigations.

*Whether there should be an exception for reporters who are witnesses to crimes.

*Whether unpublished notes or other material should be protected even if there is no expectation from the source that the material is confidential.

Jeff Portnoy, an attorney representing a group of traditional news media interests, academics and bloggers, said the group would prefer no bill to a flawed bill that contains too many exceptions and does not protect unpublished material.

He said much of the public discussion about shield laws is over protecting the identities of confidential sources but that, in practice, many news media subpoenas involve unpublished material where there were no promises of confidentiality.

“We’d probably take our chances in court,” Portnoy said after a committee hearing on the bill today.

State Attorney General Mark Bennett said he supports the concept of the bill and is willing to meet with Portnoy.

Bennett and Portnoy agree that the three-part test for disclosure, if included, should apply to criminal cases, where a reporter’s privilege would be weighed against a defendant’s right to a fair trial.

Traditional news media organizations, Portnoy said, would also prefer that the test apply only to bloggers.

But there is likely less common ground on an exception for law enforcement investigations or on protecting unpublished material.

Taniguchi said he wanted to see if any progress could be made by Friday. He is willing to give the parties involved until next Tuesday to draft a compromise.

Taniguchi said that, if he chooses to move a bill, he may add provisions not found in the House version to position for debate in conference committee.

“I’m not clear whether the bill is right to be passed this session,” he said. “But we may just pass something on to conference to further the discussion.”