Posted by Hillary Profita
CBS News
Sept. 25, 2006
Excerpt:
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White's decision to sentence
San Francisco Chronicle
reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada to 18 months in prison
is, predictably, generating a lot of noise from newspaper editorial
boards. The
San Francisco Chronicle, obviously, is calling for a federal shield law and denouncing White's decision.
The Oregonian calls the decision an act in the "criminalizing of
investigative journalism." "…As has become distressingly common in
investigations and lawsuits around the country, the journalists are
facing jail time for doing their jobs," wrote
The Washington Post's
editorial board on Friday, also heeding the call for a federal shield
law for journalists. Duke University law professor Erwin Chemerinsky
argued along the same lines for a federal law in the Orlando Sentinel:
"Putting these reporters in jail serves no purpose other than to chill
investigative reporting that informs the public about important social
and political issues." [...]
At least one journalist, however, has a different sort of headline
about this story: "Reporters doing what they have to -- and so is
judge." While he sympathizes with the plight of Fainaru-Wada and
Williams, CBSSportsline national columnist Greg Doyel isn't rallying
for a shield law or denouncing White's decision:
Orders are orders, and laws are laws.
And whether you like it or not, whoever leaked that testimony broke the
law. And now, by refusing a judge's orders to identify their source,
Fainaru-Wada and Williams are in contempt of court. That, too, is the
law.
