By Erwin Chemerinsky
Orlando Sentinel
Sept. 24, 2006
Excerpt:
The outrage of putting two reporters in
jail for 18 months for keeping their sources confidential should
finally provoke Congress into adopting a law protecting reporters who
keep their sources confidential. On Thursday, a federal judge in San
Francisco sentenced reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wade to
jail for refusing to disclose who leaked to them secret grand jury
testimony concerning the investigation of steroid abuse and the Bay
Area Laboratory Cooperative (BALCO).
Putting these reporters in jail serves no purpose other than to chill
investigative reporting that informs the public about important social
and political issues. Reporters often need to rely on confidential
sources. Perhaps most famously, the Watergate scandal never would have
been uncovered except for Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and
Carl Bernstein promising confidentiality to "Deep Throat" who
repeatedly provided crucial information.
Likewise, Williams and Fainaru-Wade needed a confidential source to
provide information for a series of articles and a book that revealed
the extent of steroid abuse in baseball and other sports. Their
revelations helped to spur baseball to adopt a long-needed drug-testing
policy.
