PROTECTING ONE'S SOURCES

Dang, the audio is only available in RealPlayer or Windows Media Player 9.

OK, so without actually hearing the story I'll just say that IMO there should be very very few circumstances where a reporter or paper should have to give up their sources.

Couldn't listen in either.

If the information from the source reveals guilty knowledge of a crime, the source cannot be protected.

I'll try to find a more complete exposition somewhere else, but you know, you can download the media players at that site--or so they contend at any event.

There was a landmark ruling in Canada today, in which a judge essentially acknowledged for the first time that journalists have a right to refuse to give up thier sources, even in a court of law. The judges reasoning, as I understand it, is that journalists perform the important job of critiquing our society. In a world where sources were open to exposure, a journalists ability to critique society would be substantially hampered.

Dammit, can't find a good link.

Hey! Maybe the CIA could learn something from a Canadian judge.

Alright, alright . . . here's an article from the Washington Post:

5 Journalists Won't Name Sources[/color]

I've been trying to find the opinion by the Supremes cited in the radio broadcast which i'd heard, but with no luck so far. I'll post this, and then go try to find the Supremes' decision.

Here's a link (if it works) to the opinion in Branzburg v. Hayes, 1972. The drift of the report i heard on the radio, is that the Supremes have never issued a definitive ruling, and that the rights of journalistic confidentiality are generally defined in statutes in the various states, or the precedential rulings in various states.

Branzburg v. Hayes[/color]

I would think "New York Times Co. v. United States" (i.e. the "Pentagon Papers" case) would be the prevailing ruling over something like this but maybe Bantam Books Inc. v. Sullivan or Near v. Minnesota apply too..

I may well be wrong in this Fishin', but i believe that it was Branzburg to which they referred in the report. All of the case law is interesting to me, and i would like to know if the statement made that the Supremes have tended to side-step the issue is valid.

The Pentagon Papers case and the others I mentioned all dealt with "prior restraint". The Branzburg case you gave a link to deals more specifically with Grand Jury testimony after something has been published. I'd never read it before but it is interesting.

In a lot of ways, yeah, I'd say they did side-step things. In the end they basically said that somtimes a reporter can be made to reveal their sources but they didn't give a clear cut line for when those "sometimes" are.

From what I gathered it looks like they were saying that if the reporter had 1st hand knowledge of a crime that couldn't be found anywhere else they could be compelled to testify about their knowledge of the crime to a Grand Jury.

I'll have to reread it again though because the application here would be in a civil lawsuit - not a criminal investigation. I didn't see anything that would lead me to believe that the USSC ever intended their ruling to apply to non-criminal investigations.

That was precisely the distinction the commentator was making in the radio piece, Boss--that the earlier decision referred to a criminal case. As i was surfing through the Supreme's opinions, i noted that very often both the Supremes and Circuit benches rejected various claims because the information was putatively available from other sources.

Man, mebbe I should go fer one of dem radio jobs eh?

Can't be that hard . . .