The Patriot-News, Oct. 20

Senators mull media's role as corruption watchdog
Testimony heard on letting reporters keep sources secret

BY BRETT LIEBERMAN
Patriot-News Washington Bureau

U.S. senators Oct. 19 struggled to balance the media's role as a watchdog against corruption with the Justice Department's opposition to legislation that would allow journalists to keep their sources a secret.

"There is no doubt about the value of investigative reporting to the public interests in exposing corruption, malfeasance, misconduct, waste," said U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa.

Specter and other lawmakers Oct. 19 greeted with skepticism the Justice Department's claims that its existing 33-year-old guidelines have provided journalists adequate protections. But lawmakers also acknowledged concerns about guarding national security.

"Here you have a reporter in jail for 85 days and millions of Americans wonder why. I'm one of those," Specter, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, told a Justice Department official during a hearing that featured New York Times reporter Judith Miller.

Specter visited Miller while she was jailed for refusing to tell federal prosecutors who told her the identity of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame.

He said the situation has led to a "chilling effect across the country on reporters."

The proposed bill would make subpoenaing journalists a last resort and would bar them from being forced to identify a source except when "necessary to prevent imminent and actual harm to national security."

Critics worry the bill would tie investigators' hands and will so broadly define a journalist that it could shield potential terrorists masquerading as journalists.

Chuck Rosenberg, a U.S. attorney in Texas testifying on behalf of the Justice Department, said subpoenas have been used sparingly to force journalists to testify and warned the bill would limit the government's ability to stop potential threats in the United States.

He said only 12 subpoenas to identify a reporter's confidential source have been issued since 1991.

"I don't see anything in our work that justifies discarding 33 years of careful practice which has served the media and the nation well," he said, adding that "We should not enter into this debate believing that the First Amendment is under assault by the Department of Justice. It manifestly is not."

Bill gives 'vital protections' Miller and other media executives said the proposed "federal shield law" provides vital protections for journalists to do their jobs, but also includes reasonable exemptions that won't tie law enforcement's hands against imminent threats.

Federal subpoenas have been used increasingly since Sept. 11, 2001, and more than two dozen reporters have been subpoenaed in the last two years, she said.

"An uncoerced, uncoercable press, though at times irritating, is vital to the perpetuation of the freedom and democracy we so often take for granted," Miller told the panel.

Dale Davenport, editorial page editor for The Patriot-News, told the committee that reporters are increasingly being subpoenaed to testify in lawsuits.

He cited the example of reporters from newspapers in York being subpoenaed in the lawsuit over the teaching of intelligent design in the Dover Area schools.

Pennsylvania and 30 other states have shield laws that provide some level of protection to shield journalists' sources, but the protections do not extend to federal courts, such as the Middle District court hearing the Dover case.

"Journalists ought to be the last resort as witnesses, not first choice," said Davenport, who was invited to the hearing after Patriot-News Editor and Publisher John Kirkpatrick lobbied Specter on the issue in June.

"Not only is being called to testify disrupting, but it has a chilling effect on the everyday sources who provide the background or the context for our stories, the glue that holds our stories together," Davenport said.