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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Wednesday, July 6, 2005

COMMENTARY

Magazine's capitulation harms our society

By David Shapiro

If the news media ever hope to close the credibility gap with our readers and viewers, our best chance is to articulate the highest ideals of our profession with conviction — and then always live up to them.

That's why it was such an astonishing act of wimpdom for Time magazine to hand over records identifying confidential news sources to a bullying prosecutor investigating Washington leaks.

Time's unprecedented capitulation will embolden attorneys across the country to pressure news reporters to tattle on their sources, undermining the precept of a free press.

If a rich media colossus such as Time won't stand up for our principles, how can smaller news organizations without Time's resources hope to fight off encroachments?

Time reporter Matthew Cooper and Judith Miller of The New York Times defied a court order to tell federal prosecutors which Bush administration official disclosed the identity of a clandestine CIA operative as payback for her husband's article criticizing the Iraq war.

Cooper and Miller were ready to go to jail to protect the integrity of their reporting — and still may have to.

But evidently, Time wasn't prepared to pay a $1,000-a-day fine imposed by a federal court for refusing to turn over confidential notes.

Soon after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intercede on behalf of the news organizations, Time broke ranks with The New York Times and surrendered its records.

Norman Pearlstine, editor in chief of Time Inc. and also an attorney, said further refusal would amount to placing the news media above the law.

"The court concluded that a citizen's duty to testify before a grand jury takes precedence over the First Amendment," Pearlstine said.

But it's not acting above the law if you're willing to accept the sanction of the court in order to stand up for important principles.

Such respectful civil disobedience has an honored place in American history, and many journalists have gone to jail in service of the professional ideals abandoned by Time.

The principles at stake are compelling.

By forcing disclosure of news sources, courts destroy our traditional role as watchdogs of the government and turn us instead into agents of the state.

If whistle-blowers believe that by talking to reporters they're effectively outing themselves to authorities, they'll keep silent and the public will be denied vital information about their government.

Some news organizations simply won't pursue stories that could put them in this intimidating line of fire.

Use of anonymous news sources rightly has become less common following high-profile scandals involving fabricated sources, but sometimes promising confidentiality is the only way to bring crucial information to the public's attention.

FBI official W. Mark Felt, the Washington Post's "Deep Throat," played a pivotal role in exposing the Watergate scandal in the Nixon administration.

Locally, the "Broken Trust" essay that helped bring down Bishop Estate trustees couldn't have been written without the cooperation of confidential sources who had intimate knowledge of the trustees' misdealings.

The First Amendment has become a license to print money in the lofty corporate media space occupied by Time, where entertainment is as much a commodity as news.

If we're going to accept the bounty the First Amendment provides us, we must also embrace the accompanying obligation to protect and nurture a free press that is so important to our participatory democracy.

Bills in Congress could resolve the tension by shielding reporters from prosecutorial bullying, but passage is doubtful in this political environment.

A bipartisan resolution in the Senate supporting reporters Cooper and Miller died when a few lawmakers used Senate rules to anonymously block it.

How ironic is that?

David Shapiro, a veteran Hawai'i journalist, can be reached by e-mail at dave@volcanicash.net.