Important...Please read if you're a journalist...

btw, here's today's whitlock column mentioned above. Not really related to the who's-your-source issue--it's about steroids--but it mentions the Telander item at the end......

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/sports/15385171.htm

 

I think that the reporters, in providing the platform that spurs the commission of the crime, are accomplices.

 

It doesn't matter if the NFL is rife with steroids.

Everyone on the offensive and defensive lines use them, so, on a team level, it's a wash. And no one gives a flying rat's ass about individual football records.

Where steroids have become a firebrand of scorn are in two places: individual sports, and teh team sport where the individual records are held in such high esteem that 32 years ago, a drug-free Hank Aaron received multitudes of death threats as he tracked down The Babe.

No ONE wants to see Aaron's hellish 1974 made a trivia note by that cheating asshole, who has had BY FAR his greatest years from the ages of 35-39. Someone please explain that phenomenon and tell me the last time that was the case for an athlete.

Oh, I know, Bonds had that really secretive and clean workout regimen. LOL!

 

columbo

spoken like the naive idiot you are....

you think performance-enhancing drugs are only used by linemen.... guess todd sauerburn was contemplating a move from punter to the offensive line.

and if our concern about steroids is just about records, then we're all just a big group of flaming idiots.

 

As noble as we think our profession is, journalists aren't above the law.

Somebody broke the law by leaking grand jury testimony.

The prosecutors have every right to use every method in their power to find who broke the law.

This isn't a stifling of freedom of the press, or freedom of the speech. The government is not clamping down because they did not like what a pair of reporters wrote. There isn't some grave injustice being committed here.

That said, both guys deserve our support.

But there is a difference between support and protest.

 

Not necessarily. It's not illegal for witnesses in a grand jury to leak testimony. They can sing to the world if they want.

It's already come out that Conte himself was a source for them -- NOT illegal.

It's hasn't been proven any law was broken here.

I urge everybody to (a) reserve judgement until we have the facts and (b) know the law.

 

Of course it is...for the next guys who have a story to tell.

I know, any reporter who would sit on a story, etc etc...but for every reporter with a hot story and a secret source, there's a legal department shaking it head and warning not to go there.

This isn't the first or last time this will happen, but it's a mistake to believe that a free and informed press isn't affected when reporters go to jail for doing their jobs too well.

 

The "press" is going to have to be a lot more vigilant if there is to be a federal shield law enacted.

Every poll you could take shows one thing: A sharp decline in credibility.

And before the bleating of "First Amendment" starts, think of this: Imagine the chain a story passes through. How many weak/non-existent links are in that chain, compared to say, 15 to 20 years ago?

I don't think Joe Citizen wants a system where it takes only someone with an agenda to push through an anonymous report, then cling to anonymity for years. That report had better be damn credible, but no one will ever know because the source won't be revealed.

The public simply won't tolerate a situation like that.

 

I have absolutely no idea where I stand on this.
I have an instinctive impulse to go grab a sign and march, simply because the profession's so embattled these days that I think we should stand with any of our colleagues simply because they are our colleagues. And I still believe "no law," -- as in, "Congress shall make no law..." -- means "no law."
However...
And it's a big "however."
I'm not sure if we should argue from principle for an absolute privilege that allows us essentially to become part of a criminal prosecution, which I believe is what's happening here. Prosecutors regularly leak GJ evidence for their own purposes, either a) to poison the jury pool and b)to increase the public pressure on a defendant. The problem with taking the leaks is that, by doing so, you -- and, often, your paper -- become unable to cover another really good story -- to wit, that a prosecutor has broken the law by leaking the testimony. We saw that, alas, with the leakfest that was Ken Starr's investigation. People who sucked up the leaks from the OIC were thereafter renedered incapable of reporting the very real network of lawyers, activists etc. who were working hand-in-glove to bring down the president, and these leaks were pre-Monica, BTW.
Also, the Novak/Judy Miller/Valerie Plame case is another, similar dilemma. Do we argue from principle for an absolute privilege to be part of a dirty-tricks operation? Or is the fact that a predential aide is leaking classified material a better story to chase? Can't chase both of them, after all.
I have no idea what the answer is to any of this.