Telander's Note, a Column, and now SF Editor Bronstein Weighs In

"Myriad" used as a noun and not an adjective is mine.

 

Today, the government will ask a US District court for an 18-month jail sentence for the Chron reporters. The reporters will ask for a nominal fine, and other limited sanctions, including possible house arrest.

For all of you who have argued that 'going to jail is part of the job if you believe in protecting sources'....think about spending 18 months of your life, locked up for doing your job.

Good luck to our colleagues today.

 

I don't know if any of you have been following the Hewlett-Packard scandal, but this DJ editor makes a pretty good argument that leaks and anonymous sources are sometimes crucial.

In Defense of Leaks

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/Story.aspx?guid=%7B6E93C703%2DF98D%2D4902%2DBA23%2D63CC765665D0%7D&siteid=

On Thursday, two San Francisco journalists will appear before a federal judge to argue why they shouldn't be sent to jail for keeping their word not to identify the leaker of grand jury documents used to blow the lid off the case of steroids in baseball. Their reports in the San Francisco Chronicle exposed the extent of abuse of steroids in sports and helped improve rules governing their usage.

None of this was possible without leaks and anonymous sources.

You may say that the public would be better off not knowing this information. That corporate boards, the Justice Department, and the executive branch of government should be allowed to operate as they see fit without fear of being exposed in the media if they are doing something wrong, or even controversial. You may say that baseball isn't important enough to warrant such practices, or that the war on terror is too important to allow such leaks. That Hewlett-Packard shareholders should have better things to worry about.

But now that you know the information that was kept from you, can you imagine you'd ever not want to know? Me neither.

 

Jay chimes in with his 2 cents. Pretty good, though he comes through with unnecessary bashing of bloggers, et al: Our business is changing by the year, the month, the hour. I have little idea where it's going, and what I do know, I don't like. Web sites peek around corners like sewer rats, operated by weirdos who live in their parents' basements, pretend to be experts and break ''stories'' that gullible people actually believe.

http://suntimes.com/output/mariotti/cst-spt-jay212.html

 

The sentence is in. Just moved.

Two San Francisco Chronicle reporters were sentenced to a maximum 18 months in prison Thursday, pending an appeal, for refusing to testify about who leaked them secret grand jury testimony from Barry Bonds and other elite athletes.
Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada published a series of articles and a book based partly on the leaked transcripts of the testimony of Bonds, Jason Giambi and others before a grand jury investigating the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, a Burlingame-based nutritional supplement company exposed as a steroid ring two years ago.
Federal prosecutors asked U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White to send the pair to prison for the full term of the grand jury investigating the leak, or until they agree to testify. Both sides have agreed to stay the ruling by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White pending an appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

 

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/09/21/BAGPKLA0CT10.DTL

 

Except that guarantee is not in the Constitution. Read the Constitution. Take seventh-grade civics again. Take the most basic journalism law class there is; this will be covered on the first day.

This blatant, willful ignorance of the facts is moronic. Know the law. If you don't, STFU.

 

Good to see Kelly McBride is making her biannual quote on ethics.

 

You're so damned smart. Yes, our basic freedoms are not guaranteed in the Constitution. They're in the amendments to the Constitution. Slap a medal on your chest.

 

What you say is guaranteed there is not there, though.

Your library might have a copy of the Bill of Rights, and the local community college might let you audit the media law course. They're probably already past the part you missed, though.

Oh, BTW, update at, well, you know.

 

The Bill of Rights is amendments 1-10 of the Constitution.

For people who really care, the day in San Francisco was a good one. Telander supplied the t-shirts, "Sportswriters for Freedom of the Press." All of us supplied passion. It'll be another year before this is over. Meanwhile, our government, handed new weapons by judges, persists in coercing reporters. Hearst's lawyer told me her office handled 78 reporter subpoenas this year, as opposed to 5 last year. The need for a federal shield law is obvious.

 

Settle down, David. You've had a long day.