PressEthic

According to an article by Joe Garofoli that ran in today’s San Francisco Chronicle, two of the paper’s own reporters, Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, will have to stand before a federal judge tomorrow to explain “why they shouldn't be jailed for refusing to reveal who leaked them confidential grand jury testimony they reported in exposing the use of performance-enhancing drugs by elite athletes.”

Garofoli notes that while the articles written by the two journalists “helped change the culture of sports,” in terms of “a tougher steroids policy in Major League Baseball,” and more awareness of steroid abuse in athletics, their work may have had an even larger influence on the climate of investigative journalism.

“…the larger impact will be a chilling effect on all sorts of investigative reporting. Some legal and journalism experts say that chill is already going on, as the Bush administration has aggressively pushed to plug leaks at all levels of government, not just those involving national security.”

The obvious dilemma, as Garofoli points out, is that investigative reporters rely on confidential sources for information though “the justice system will lose a valuable tool for ferreting out hard-to-elicit information,” if testimonies given before a grand jury are allowed to leak.

The article also notes the possibility of a federal shield law that would allow journalists to protect the confidentiality of their sources, except for cases involving national security, an issue that coincidently, was discussed today before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Like a few sources in the article pointed out, this isn’t a case of national security. It’s about the hot topic of drug abuse in sports. Though reputations of some athletes may have been (fairly) put on the line, this situation seems to be widely viewed as good old fashion reporting. But if a federal shield law could protect journalist in situations like this, then they better get on it, because until they do, I think fewer and fewer journalist will be encouraged by their newsrooms to pursue such risky investigative stories - especially with what many see as a growing hostility towards the supposedly shady media.