The Hindu : International : U.S. judge fines reporters for not revealing sources

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Friday, Aug 20, 2004

International

International

U.S. judge fines reporters for not revealing sources

By Jacques Steinberg and Michael Janofsky

WASHINGTON, AUG. 19. A federal judge in Washington held five journalists in contempt of court on Wednesday for refusing to disclose the names of confidential sources who might have given them information about Dr. Wen Ho Lee, the scientist at the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory who had once been suspected of espionage.

The judge, Thomas Penfield Jackson, of the U.S. District Court in Washington, ordered that each journalist be fined $500 a day. But he immediately suspended the imposition of those penalties pending the reporters' appeals.

The journalists are Jeff Gerth and James Risen of The New York Times, Robert Drogin of The Los Angeles Times, H. Josef Hebert of The Associated Press and Pierre Thomas, formerly of the Cable News Network and now ABC News.

Lawyers for all five defendants said on Wednesday night that they intended to appeal the judge's order to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington. A lawyer for Dr. Lee, Brian A. Sun, said that he was pleased by the order and confident that it would be upheld.

Mr. Jackson's order is one of several issued recently by federal judges that some legal experts say have weakened long-cited protections for gathering and publishing news.

Last week, another federal judge in Washington held a reporter for Time magazine in contempt for refusing to identify a confidential source in a criminal investigation, one involving the leak of the name of a covert Central Intelligence Agency officer, and ordered the reporter jailed. Dr. Lee, who was indicted on 59 felony counts but who later pleaded guilty to a single count of mishandling nuclear weapons information, is suing the Government under the Privacy Act over leaks from his confidential record. For his suit to proceed, he has to first identify who might have divulged information from his employment files.

In ruling on Dr. Lee's request, Mr. Jackson said he was not persuaded by the journalists' invocation of "reporter's privilege." Citing that principle, which is grounded in a concurrence in a 1972 Supreme Court case known as Branzburg, lower-court judges have generally held that a reporter need not be required to testify about confidential or unpublished material, unless it goes to the heart of a particular case and cannot be otherwise obtained.

Instead, Mr. Jackson found that each reporter had violated his order of October 9 that had compelled each to give the names of his confidential sources to Dr. Lee.

A lawyer for The New York Times, George Freeman, said, "The Times continues to believe, as we have for decades, that confidential sources are critical for us to give the public as broad a perspective as possible on the important issues of the day, particularly when they concern the actions of government."

Mr. Jackson issued his ruling only hours after hearing testimony from lawyers for the five journalists and Dr. Lee, who sat quietly and almost motionless throughout the arguments. He left the courtroom without responding to reporters' questions.

Several lawyers argued that nothing their clients wrote or said about Dr. Lee had violated his privacy rights. Nathan E. Siegel, representing Mr. Hebert, insisted that he did little more than write what other news organisations had already reported. "You subpoenaed the wrong reporter," Mr. Siegel said. "No one leaked any information to him."

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