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Protecting Reporters’ Phone Records
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Published: November 29, 2006
A journalist’s ability to protect the identity of confidential sources has been further eroded by the Supreme Court’s refusal this week to stop a prosecutor from reviewing the telephone records of two New York Times reporters. This is the latest legal blow to the diminishing right of journalists to shield informants who often provide information of great interest and importance but who might be punished if their identities were known.

The case arose from a Chicago grand jury investigation into who told the two reporters, Judith Miller and Philip Shenon, about actions the government planned to take against two Islamic charities in late 2001. The government contends that the reporters, in performing the normal journalistic practice of calling the charities for comment, effectively tipped them off to impending raids and asset seizures, undermining the effort.

Rather than drag the reporters into court, where they could have protected their sources by refusing to testify, the prosecutor subpoenaed their phone records for 11 days in 2001. A trial court prohibited the government from obtaining the records from the phone companies, but a divided appeals court reversed that decision. Now the Supreme Court, in refusing to intervene, has effectively allowed the prosecutor to search through the records in hopes he can pinpoint the source of the leak.

This is a bad outcome for the press and for the public. The phone records reveal the identities of lots of sources having nothing to do with the leaks. The appeals court’s disingenuous suggestion that The Times might redact irrelevant records would simply have helped point to possible leakers.

The public will be ill served if this case reduces the willingness of officials to reveal important but sensitive information. The privilege granted to journalists to protect their sources needs to be bolstered with a strong federal shield law that would preserve the public interest in newsgathering and dissemination of information.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/29/op...=1&oref=slogin

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Translation: The Times and terrorists will be ill served if the paper can't keep splashing secret and sensitive info undermining the Bush administration's counterterrorism efforts on its front pages. The editorial ends with an S.O.S. to Congress to pass a special federal shield law like the one they wanted passed during the Plame brouhaha.

Michelle Malkin

cropolis

Why bother to quote Hillary? This quote is nothing more than political fodder. If someone is lying, tell us who it is. If someone is pretending to be someone they aren't, tell us who.

alias

Hillary. I am using Hillary's quote to show she is really talking about herself.

sgtdmski

Nothing pisses me off more than the crap that comes from journalists. While the Constitution has singled them out for specific protection, freedom of the press, they themselves seem to lack any professional integrity.

In most every other profession, in which people place their trust in those working, there is a professional organization that set standards, grants licenses, and sanctions those within the profession who violate the rules and standards. This all holds true except for the press. There is no professional organization to police the members, nor one to sanction its members.

Time and again the press complains about the actions of the government, or better yet, even the people, when it comes to curtailing their abilities to report. Perhaps this would all stop, if they themselves actually created an organization to police their own members. Until such time, that action wil have to fall upon the people or the government.

The press has no one to blame but itself.

dmk

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Conservatism, I repeat is not an ideology. It does not breed fanatics....But if you want men who seek, reasonably and prudently, to reconcile the best in wisdom of our ancestors with the change which is essential to a vigorous civil social existence, then you will do well to turn to conservative principles
-Russell Kirk-

intangible child

Conservatism, I repeat is not an ideology. It does not breed fanatics....But if you want men who seek, reasonably and prudently, to reconcile the best in wisdom of our ancestors with the change which is essential to a vigorous civil social existence, then you will do well to turn to conservative principles

Russell Kirk - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Too bad he died in 1994 before he could see the corruption that plagues the repulsian party!

Bush Family Values Photo Album

'I hate Saddam Hussein'

Thanks for the Memories

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