Shield Law

Superior Court Judge Bernard Kamins backed away Friday from his earlier suggestion that a Times reporter could be fined $1,500 daily for refusing to divulge a confidential news source. That was a wise and welcome decision. But the single $1,500 fine that still stands continues to represent an unacceptable challenge in principle to the state constitutional right to protect a news source.

A Times reporter Thursday refused to disclose the confidential source of a Los Angeles Police Department Internal Affairs report on the Rodney G. King beating, prompting a judge to impose a $1,500 fine. Superior Court Judge Bernard Kamins ordered the reporter, Richard A. Serrano, to appear every day in court until he reveals who leaked the 314-page report detailing the department's investigation of the March 3 beating. Serrano wrote a May 21 article based on the report.

The state Supreme Court, in a pivotal test of the "newsman's shield law," agreed Thursday to decide whether journalists can be forced to disclose unpublished information they acquire covering an event that occurs in public. The justices, in brief orders, announced they would hear two cases that could determine the scope of protections for reporters that were enacted into the state Constitution by the voters in 1980.

Deanne Stillman didn't expect to wind up in a thorny legal fight over reporters' rights when she began her investigation of a vicious double murder in the desert community of Twentynine Palms. Stillman, a contributing writer to Los Angeles magazine, spends a lot of time in the desert, hiking in Joshua Tree National Park and hanging out in Twentynine Palms, a community dominated by a large Marine base.

The case for a federal media "shield" law is simple: Reporters must be protected so they can give citizens the information they need, particularly information that powerful interests would rather keep secret. Whistle-blowers and other insiders -- without a meaningful promise of confidentiality from journalists -- would be less willing to expose wrongdoing, both in and out of government. The ability of journalists to protect their sources is, simply put, a fundamental pillar of our democracy and liberty.

A Los Angeles Times reporter was cited for contempt and jailed for several hours Wednesday after she refused to answer a question in Long Beach Municipal Court concerning an arrest she witnessed while preparing a story on a police task force. Roxana Kopetman, a reporter in The Times' Long Beach bureau, spent about six hours in a courthouse lockup before she was released on a writ of habeas corpus.

The House of Representatives this week took a long step toward protecting the American people's access to a free press when it overwhelmingly approved passage of a federal shield law that would prevent journalists from being compelled to reveal confidential sources. The Free Flow of Information Act had bipartisan sponsors -- Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) and Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) -- and 176 Republicans joined 222 Democrats in supporting its passage 398-21.