Reading Eagle — Measure would help expose corruption

• By: ASNE staff
• On: 10/10/2007 15:45:50
• In: Shield law editorials

Reading (Pa.) Eagle
Oct. 10, 2007

The Issue: A federal shield law to protect journalists from being forced to reveal their confidential sources takes another step toward passage.

Our Opinion: This law would aid reporters in uncovering fraud and corruption.

The government has moved another step closer to providing journalists with a much-needed federal shield law.

Last week the Senate Judiciary Committee dismissed objections to the proposed law, which would protect journalists who refused to reveal confidential sources except in certain cases.

Lt. Gen. Ronald L. Burgess, acting principal deputy director of national intelligence, and Brian A. Benczkowski, principal deputy assistant attorney general, sent letters to the committee complaining that the proposed law would make it harder for the government to track down leaks and could endanger national security.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat and chairman of the committee, dismissed those concerns as overblown, noting that just because information is classified doesn’t mean the security of the nation hangs in the balance if it’s revealed to a reporter.

“We’ve had press releases from the White House that have been classified,” he said. If the proposed measure becomes law, the federal government will be joining 32 states, including Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia in providing such protection.

In recent years several journalists have been threatened with incarceration, and some have served time in jail, for declining to name their confidential sources.

Among the most infamous cases is the one involving Judith Miller, a former reporter with The New York Times, who was jailed because she refused to reveal her sources for information she had collected concerning the unmasking of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, eventually was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in the case.

The importance of the case is that exposing the identity of a covert intelligence agent is a federal crime.

Columnist Robert Novak, the journalist who broke the news about Plame, eventually identified former Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage as the person who leaked Plame’s identity. However, Armitage never was charged.

What concerns most journalists is that the Plame case and others like it have frightened potential sources who might have been willing to provide information about fraud and corruption in the federal government if they could be certain their names would never become known.

Very often investigative reporting is based on information received from confidential sources. If those sources don’t come forward, it is doubtful the public would find out about such things as a president covering up for the participants in a second-rate burglary or carrying on an affair in the Oval Office.

The federal shield law that’s working its way through Congress would help journalists in their efforts to uncover such scandals.

According to Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat and one of the architects of the measure, the proposed law balances safety concerns, such as combating terrorism, with freedom.

“Central to security is the ability of the government to get information that will bring a criminal to justice and prevent harm to our nation,” he said. “Central to freedom is a vibrant and active press, which can gather news from all sources, including confidential ones.”

In order to keep the public well informed, this proposed measure needs to become law.