Arizona Daily Star — Shield law would protect your right to know

• By: ASNE staff
• On: 07/08/2008 12:07:44
• In: Shield law editorials

Our VIEW: Congress should match states' laws in addressing, protecting reporters' use of unnamed sources

Arizona Daily Star, Tucson
June 29, 2008

Legislation pending in the U.S. Senate would bring federal law into line with laws in 49 states, including Arizona, that protect reporters' confidential sources.

We support the bill, known as the Free Flow of Information Act (S. 2035), which has passed the House and has been approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee, 15-4. No Senate floor vote has been scheduled, and this bill must be passed.

Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., was one of the committee members who voted against the bill, citing national-security concerns. We hope he will rethink his position. Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, favors the bill. The attorneys general of 30 states, including Arizona's Terry Goddard, have endorsed the bill.

Why should you care? Because shield laws don't only allow reporters to protect their secret sources (and keep reporters who refuse to identify sources out of jail), they also protect the First Amendment to the Constitution's guarantee of freedom of the press, which is vital to our democracy.

One of a newspaper's most sacred duties is to give you information that you could get yourself only with tremendous difficulty: We go to the City Council meetings; we sit through bond hearings; we rifle through court and police documents; we cultivate experts, insiders, scholars.

The shield laws assure that reporters can do this work so that you are able to hold elected officials accountable; protect your family from risks to their health; vote wisely; and see industry, government and other abuses of the law and violations of the people's trust. Such information cannot always be found in the public record or from sources willing to step into the spotlight.

Consider just a few stories that were first published based on anonymous sources: the Walter Reed Medical Center abuses, Enron, the BALCO (Bay Area Laboratory Co-Cooperative) steriod scandal.

Reporters have been jailed for refusing to identify sources, and journalists reporting government misconduct are sometimes accused of “crimes” and “treason” for “covering up” misdeeds of their sources, according to “Publish and Perish,” a March 2007 study by the American Civil Liberties Union. The federal bill would end most of those threats.

The Arizona Daily Star's ethics code bars the use of unnamed sources unless the information is “of overwhelming public concern.” That determination is made by editors at the highest level of the newspaper.

The Star believes that sources who wish to remain anonymous sometimes are attempting to fly trial balloons, damage a competitor or promote a point of view.

We believe readers should know who shared information that we print so that they can judge for themselves if the source has an ax to grind.

We apply our ethics policy to stories we receive from The Associated Press, The New York Times and other wire services.

All of the wires frequently file stories citing “a source close to the story” (we have no way of knowing how close); “a military/government source who refused to be named because he was not authorized to speak on the matter” (we see this on many stories out of Iraq); “a top State Department official” (this usually means either the secretary herself or her press liaison); “observers,” (which may appear in campaign stories, and often refers to the reporters in the press pack talking among themselves). We don't print these.

Still, this newspaper leaves the door open for use of anonymous sources because sometimes the only way to get information that's vitally important to Tucson and Southern Arizona is to give anonymity to protect a credible source from draconian repercussions.

Under Arizona law, we can do that. It's time to bring federal law into harmony.