November
1,
2004
During
the past year, several journalists, including three from The New York Times,
have been subpoenaed and threatened with imprisonment, some for failing to
appear before a grand jury, others for refusing to disclose the names of
confidential sources to a Federal District Court judge.
Judy
Miller, an investigative reporter for The Times, is facing an 18-month jail
term for refusing to name her sources to prosecutors investigating the
disclosure of the identity of a covert C.I.A. agent.
And get this: the story Judy was working on never appeared in The
Times. Her sentence has been
temporarily suspended by a Federal judge pending an appeal.
Four
other journalists were ordered to testify under oath in the government’s
inquiry and threatened with jail time for refusing to do so.
Two
other Times correspondents, Jeff Gerth and James Risen, and reporters from the
Los Angeles Times, ABC News and The Associated Press were held in contempt of
court last August for refusing to disclose the names of confidential sources
who might have given information to Wen Ho Lee, the scientist at the Los
Alamos nuclear laboratory, who had once been suspected of espionage.
Under
the Guild’s collective bargaining agreement with The Times, The Times must
provide legal representation for journalists in such cases and indeed is doing
so.
The
Newspaper Guild has filed an amicus brief in support of these journalists.
The Guild strongly believes that asking journalists to disclose their
sources violates the basic principles of the First Amendment and threatens
journalists’ ability to do their job without fear of reprisals.
The
Guild is asking fellow journalists to show their support by signing a petition
in support of these journalists. The
petition is available online at: http://www.rcfp.org/standup/.
In Unity and Solidarity
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11/01/04