Free Republic

A federal law to protect journalists from having to reveal their confidential sources is necessary no matter what, Tom Curley, president and CEO of The Associated Press said Tuesday. "It's nuts to see reporters going to jail for upholding professional standards," he said at the National Press Club. "We're not asking for an exception just for us. We're asking for an exception that already exists."

Like many Americans, I am perplexed by the federal investigation into the alleged leak of classified information that exposed Valerie Plame Wilson, the wife of Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador, as a Central Intelligence Agency officer. So far the special prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, has achieved one notable result: putting a New York Times reporter, Judith Miller, in jail for refusing to break her promise of confidentiality to her sources in response to a grand jury subpoena. The incarceration of Ms. Miller is all the more baffling because she has never written a word about the C.I.A. flap....

Lawyers for Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper yesterday urged a federal judge not to jail him for refusing to discuss his confidential sources with a prosecutor, arguing in a court filing that there is no need for his testimony now that his employer has turned over his notes, which identify the sources. Attorneys for New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who, like Cooper, faces four months in jail for defying Chief U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan's order to cooperate with a special prosecutor's investigation, also urged Hogan yesterday not to jail her. In papers filed yesterday, her lawyers said...

In yesterday's (March 27) Los Angeles Times, media reporter and critic David Shaw demonstrates Oscar Wilde's maxim that modern journalism is important—if only because it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. Giving every indication that he's read a lot of stories about bloggers but not that many actual blogs, Shaw disparages the form as the error-filled rants of amateurs in his piece, "Do Bloggers Deserve Basic Journalistic Protections?" It's a "solipsistic, self-aggrandizing journalist-wannabe genre," Shaw writes. Without naming a specific offender—except Matt Drudge, who he acknowledges really isn't a blogger—Shaw generalizes about bloggers for 1,300 gassy...

GUEST OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR Los Angeles Say that an I.R.S. agent leaks a politician's income tax return to a newspaper reporter, an act that is a federal felony. The newspaper may have a First Amendment right to publish the information, especially since it bears on a matter of public interest. The government, meanwhile, is entitled to punish the agent, to protect citizens' privacy and ensure a fair and efficient tax system. To punish the agent, prosecutors may need to get the leaker's name from the reporter; but if the reporter refuses to testify because of a "journalist's privilege" to protect confidential...

Reporters would not be forced to reveal their sources, and their notes, photographs and other material would be protected from government eyes under a bill introduced Friday. Amid a spate of First Amendment fights pitting the government against journalists over confidential sources, Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn., proposed the legislation as critical to ensuring the nation's liberties. "Democracy is premised on an informed citizenry," Dodd said at a Capitol Hill news conference. "A free press is the best guarantee of a knowledgeable citizenry." Journalists contend the First Amendment, which established freedom of the press, gives reporters the right not to...