

In Major Ruling, Court Orders Times Reporter to Testify - hedonist
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/20/us/in-major-ruling-court-orders-times-reporter-to-testify.html

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jetti
The following really struck me:

"In a 118-page set of opinions, two members of a three-judge panel for the
United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va. — the
court whose decisions cover the Pentagon and the C.I.A. — ruled that the First
Amendment provides no protection to reporters who receive unauthorized leaks
from being forced to testify against the people suspected of leaking to them."

Especially seeing as there is no such thing a leak that isn't unauthorized. It
seems another step in hiding information from the public because would-be
leakers now need to worry that the reporter they give information to would be
forced to reveal their source.

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mmanfrin
Playing devils-advocate here, but this isn't really new -- the fourth estate
flourished because of journalists who vowed to go to prison rather than reveal
sources, and it became a game of chicken that Journalists won in that era. Now
it's the Government that has decided not to blink and the weakened resolve of
news organizations has made it easy for them to trample over hard-won gains of
decades past.

There, to my knowledge, have never been codified protections for journalists
-- just standards.

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jetti
"There, to my knowledge, have never been codified protections for journalists
-- just standards."

I didn't believe this so I decided to take to Google...turns out there doesn't
appear to be any formal laws. There is section 8 of the Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights
([http://www.iachr.org/declaration.htm](http://www.iachr.org/declaration.htm))
but that means nothing.

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lawnchair_larry
Doesn't seem any different than Judith Miller, who is mentioned at the end of
page 2. She went to prison instead of revealing her sources.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller#Contempt_of_cour...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller#Contempt_of_court)

~~~
tptacek
Miller disclosed her source after being released.

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ferdo
The government ruled in favor of the government and against individual rights
again? At least they're consistent.

~~~
andylei
the courts always rule in favor of the executive branch. every single ruling.
don't even bother reading the opinions; there's nothing useful in those. if
you see "United States" at the top, you'll immediately know the victor.

~~~
dragonwriter
> the courts always rule in favor of the executive branch. every single
> ruling. don't even bother reading the opinions; there's nothing useful in
> those. if you see "United States" at the top, you'll immediately know the
> victor.

 _United States v. United States District Court_ , 407 U.S. 297 (1972) [1] --
particularly relevant in the area of domestic surveillance -- disagrees with
you.

[1]
[http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/407/297/case.html](http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/407/297/case.html)

~~~
jessaustin
Surely we can say at this point that ruling is a dead letter? Lots of people
are nostalgic for the freedom that some of us used to have.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Surely we can say at this point that ruling is a dead letter?

It explicitly didn't consider foreign intelligence surveillance power, and
FISA was adopted after it to limit domestic surveillance using the foreign
intelligence excuse, which largely reduced the then-building pressure on the
Court to resolve that issue. The loosening of FISA under the FISA Amendments
Act and the subsequent mass surveillance means that the pressure is likely to
return.

I wouldn't say _US v. US District Court_ is a dead letter now. I would say
that we are reaching the point where how the Supreme Court decides the issue
it deferred then will determine whether it _becomes_ a dead letter.

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linuxhansl
Anybody surprised about this?

This is in line with what we have seen before. The "war on the whistle
blower".

Next we'll see attempts to make it illegal to publish classified information
after it has been received (or maybe it is already - see the Wikileaks
disaster). In that case the reporter and the news outlet itself would be held
responsible.

~~~
tptacek
I'm not surprised because courts have been holding reporters in contempt for
decades for attempting to assert a privilege against outing sources that the
law does not recognize.

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tptacek
Federal law doesn't recognize a "reporter's privilege" to refuse testimony
about sources. Some states do (this is a federal case, not a state one) but
those protections are often qualified, for instance preventing reporters from
being forced to testify as a "first resort", but requiring testimony if all
other investigative avenues are exhausted.

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cliveowen
This is eerily similar to the plot of the movie "Nothing but the truth"
starring Kate Beckinsale as a reporter outing a C.I.A. agent. In the movie the
reporter outs a C.I.A. operative and is then prosecuted for not revealing her
source. If I understand correctly in this case the situation is even worse,
the source of the leak is known and been prosecuted and the reporter has been
asked to testify in his trial, though I guess the reporter never breached the
law.

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jpdoctor
To save everyone from having to look it up:

 _Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or
of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to
petition the Government for a redress of grievances._

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tptacek
Congress in this instance has not made any law prohibiting a reporter from
publishing a story, and reporters being required to testify is just one of a
myriad of circumstances in which parties to controversies can be required to
testify in one way or another.

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baddox
If the freedom of the press is infringed, and the infringement was legal, that
must mean Congress made a law infringing on the freedom of the press, right?

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tptacek
This is like arguing that reporters should be able to break into computers to
get information for stories; after all, anything you did to criminalize that
would be an infringement on the press.

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baddox
I was disputing your claim that this wasn't a first amendment violation
because Congress didn't make a relevant law. Now you're arguing that this
wasn't a first amendment violation because there was no infringement on the
freedom of the press, which is a much more tenable argument.

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PhasmaFelis
Paywalled. Anyone got a readable link?

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ollysb
If you're using chrome you can just open an incognito window and view it
there.

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davidgerard
Same in Firefox. It's even a right-click option.

