Sacramento Bee — Rick Rodriguez: Federal shield law would protect public's right to know

• By: ASNE staff
• On: 10/09/2007 11:34:53
• In: Shield law editorials

Sacramento (Calif.) Bee
Oct. 6, 2007

When track star Marion Jones admitted Thursday that she used steroids while training for the 2000 Summer Olympics, I was profoundly disappointed and paradoxically proud.

Disappointed because another American hero had fallen, a hero Sacramentans enjoyed watching run and jump so gracefully at the Olympic trials held in 2000 and 2004 at Sacramento State's Hornet Stadium.

Proud because it was in large part the work of fellow journalists Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada of the San Francisco Chronicle that eventually led to the truth coming out. It was their reporting that made public the links between the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO) and steroid use in sports.

In stories like this one, I sometimes wonder if everyone really wants to know the truth. Judging from e-mail and letters we receive, it's not always clear that people do, particularly when controversial stories first break and they involve athletes or other public figures we admire or even idolize.

Do we need to know the truth? Absolutely -- it's what sets our form of government apart from so many others.

So what did Williams and Fainaru-Wada get from our federal government for their efforts to tell the truth? They were prosecuted by the Justice Department and found in contempt of court by a federal judge for refusing to reveal to a grand jury who leaked them sealed transcripts in the BALCO case. A last-minute admission by an attorney who said he leaked the transcripts spared them time in jail.

Williams, speaking last week in Sacramento at the California Journalism Awards luncheon, said he and Fainaru-Wada were prepared to go to jail to preserve a tenet that is sacrosanct to journalists: You don't reveal sources to whom you've promised confidentiality.

To do so would mean that sources who fear retribution for revealing wrongdoing in government or private enterprise no longer would feel free to tell what they know. It would mean that information the public has a right to know would never be reported.

Increasingly, however, federal officials are attempting to compel journalists to reveal sources. More than 40 reporters have been subpoenaed or questioned about their confidential sources in the last few years, according to the Newspaper Association of America. We've had three reporters at The Bee questioned about their sources of information by federal officials.

With the public's need to know in this complex world greater than ever, there is an increased push among journalists for a law that would "shield" reporters from being compelled to reveal their sources in federal cases.

This isn't something new or radical. Thirty-three states, including California, and the District of Columbia have "shield laws" in effect for state cases and 16 other states have recognized the right as the result of judicial rulings. It's at the federal level where sources and reporters have no protection.

And in Congress, there appears to be growing bipartisan support for a federal law to provide some protection.

Called the Free Flow of Information Act of 2007, versions of the bill are working their way through both houses. They don't provide an absolute privilege protecting reporters from having to reveal their confidential sources. There are exceptions, for example, for national security and in cases where people are endangered.

But support is coming from lawmakers on opposite sides of the political spectrum, such as Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., and Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.

Pence, who in his official biography describes himself as "a Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order," is a co-author of the House of Representatives version of the Free Flow of Information Act of 2007.

"Compelling reporters to testify, and in particular, compelling them to reveal the identity of their confidential sources, is a detriment to the public interest. Without the promise of confidentiality, many important conduits of information about our government will be shut down," Pence said in a statement released in May.

On Thursday, the same day Marion Jones made her admission, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed a compromise version of the law on a 15-2 vote. Kennedy noted in a statement that the bill "strikes a balance between the need to protect confidential sources and the need to ensure that our justice system can obtain essential information."

Sounds like a reasonable and needed compromise to me.

About the writer:

Rick Rodriguez is executive editor and senior vice president of The Bee. He can be reached at (916) 321-1002 or rrodriguez@sacbee.com. This column appears every other Saturday to share The Bee's news-gathering and decision-making processes. Rodriguez and other editors will also blog and answer questions online at www.sacbee.com/editor.