Shield Law

The Justice Department plans to announce its opposition today to a proposed federal shield law that would protect journalists from having to reveal their sources. In written testimony scheduled before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Deputy Atty. Gen. James B. Comey calls the bill "bad public policy." In the testimony, Comey says the bill would give more protection to reporters than is offered others, such as attorneys and spouses, who are also shielded from testifying.

Lawyers for five journalists found in contempt for refusing to name confidential sources told a federal appeals court Monday that a former nuclear weapons scientist who is suing the government should have tried harder to get the information from other sources before taking the journalists to court.

From an American Bar Assn. conclave in Florida to the National Press Club in Washington, Judith Miller basks in acclaim. A veteran national security reporter for the New York Times, she insists over and over that she rejects it, but the mantle is proffered nonetheless -- 1st Amendment martyr.

Three Web bloggers who published secrets about Apple Computer Inc. filed an appeal Tuesday, as expected, arguing that a judge's ruling requiring them to reveal their sources violated the 1st Amendment. Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge James Kleinberg ruled March 11 that the three online reporters would have to provide the identities of their confidential sources.

News reporters do not have a 1st Amendment right to refuse to testify about their conversations with government officials, a three-judge panel of a U.S. appeals court said Tuesday, upholding a judge's order that could put reporters from Time magazine and the New York Times in jail. The decision by the panel of the U.S.

British TV journalist Martin Bashir asked a judge Tuesday to reject a bid by prosecutors to have him testify in Michael Jackson's upcoming child molestation trial. Bashir's 2003 documentary, "Living With Michael Jackson," triggered a furor when the pop star admitted that he enjoyed sleepovers with young boys.

A judge Thursday ordered author Miles Corwin to testify about his presence at a police search of actor Robert Blake's Studio City home after Blake's wife was shot to death three years ago. A lawyer for Corwin, a former Los Angeles Times reporter who spent a year with Los Angeles police researching a book, had argued that as a journalist, he was shielded from testifying. He said he would not appeal.

A federal judge Wednesday held five journalists in contempt of court for refusing to disclose the names of their confidential sources for reports about a nuclear weapons scientist under government investigation in 1999. U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ordered the journalists, including a reporter for The Times, to pay fines of $500 a day until each divulges information about his sources to lawyers for Wen Ho Lee, who worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

In your Aug. 13 editorial "All Leaks Are Not Alike," you note that sometimes journalists may be too "promiscuous" with offers of anonymity to their sources. The issue here is not really about the shield law, it is that a crime has been committed, and whether a reporter who knowingly publishes information that violates the national security laws has crossed the line. After all, if the journalists did not publish this information (which violates national security), the crime would have been moot.