Protecting Your Source
 

Reporter convicted of contempt

Journalist refused to reveal source of FBI videotape
PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island (AP) -- A Providence, Rhode Island, television reporter was convicted of criminal contempt Thursday for refusing to say who gave him an FBI videotape showing a city official taking a bribe.

Jim Taricani, of WJAR, is scheduled to be sentenced by U.S. District Judge Ernest Torres on December 9. The undercover tape was aired prominently and repeatedly by the station.

Taricani faces up to six months in prison.

The tape was part of a federal probe into corruption at Providence City Hall during former Mayor Vincent "Buddy" Cianci Jr.'s administration.

Taricani, 55, broke no law by airing the tape, which shows Frank Corrente, a top aide for Cianci, taking an envelope stuffed with cash from an undercover FBI informant.

But attorneys, investigators and defendants were under court order not to disseminate any tapes connected to the probe, and a special prosecutor had been appointed to find out who leaked the tape.

Torres has said the leak was meant to either disrupt the corruption investigation at City Hall or deprive defendants of a fair trial by influencing prospective jurors.

The tape aired in 2001, two months before Cianci, Corrente and others were indicted in the investigation code-named "Operation Plunder Dome." Both Cianci and Corrente were convicted and are serving time in federal prison.

Around the nation, several reporters face possible fines or jail, including in cases of the leaked identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame and a lawsuit against the government by nuclear physicist Wen Ho Lee. Taricani would be the first of this crop of reporters to go to jail on a charge of criminal contempt.


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Should a journalist be forced to reveal their source, under threat of jail?

If you were a journalist, and it meant your going to jail for 6 months, or revealing a source, would you go to jail?

I would protect my source. Go to jail? Yes, if necessary. What good is the source if they can't be protected?

While it may sometimes appear that protecting a source could hamper an investigation, I think there is a larger issue here. Our press should never be held accountable to the government. It was supposed to be that our government was held accountable to the press, and us.

It sounded like a good idea at the time, I guess.

I couldn't agree with JumpinJesus more.

I'd assume that the attention directed towards the entire situation would be enough to jumpstart a journalists' career - I'd take the 6 months of jail, the fame that comes from the situation, and the appearance of one who fell on a grenade for what he believed in than reveal the source, save myself from jail time, and become a journalist who isn't worthy of trust.

I watched this earlier today and was just flabbergasted that the judge filed for criminal contempt.

Obviously in post 9/11 there's something else in the air...

It depends on the source and the trial. There are situations in which I would reveal a source rather than go to jail and situations in which I would not reveal a source.

The press was also supposed to report facts truthfully, not engage in political wrangling of their own. The majority of the so-called "media" in the US are not, and should not be protected as journalists because they give their version of the truth in whatever way it helps them, their station, or their political party.
I'm becoming more and more of a fan of countries that ban their press corps from putting spins on news.

was the tape shown before the gag order was issued? sorry, the showing of the tape violated the gag order, not the freedom that the press is falling back on...

The gag order was for the attorneys, investigators, and defendents - not reporters.

The leak in the gag order is the crime. Not the airing of the tape.

I don't think that situational ethics apply to this. I guess what I mean is that the idea that in one case it may be okay and in another (a different situation/different source) it might be okay is not how I would live.

You either live by your word or you live without integrity. The reporter who took the tape certainly made a pledge that he would not reveal his source. He should live by his word.

Honor your word. Mean what you say and say what you mean. People will come to know that you are a person with integrity.

If I say I'll keep my mouth shut, I do it. No questions asked. If someone tells me they're going to go on a shooting spree, I'll probably change my mind, but I'm not going to reveal a source of information.

I'm not exactly sure of what I would do. To a point I would love to think our system is smart enough to say, hey, this guy was given this and he aired it. Which is perfectly legal and only morally wrong. But then I think about how many times I've seen the system do the most idiotic of things, and putting a man in jail because he wouldnt say where he got a tape from is possible.

Easy answer is that I would not go to jail for anyone, noone to me is that special enough. But if I had a fighting chance, I'd hold out long as all possible.

If the media doesn't promise to protect its sources then sooner or later those sources aren't going to exist anymore. People won't spill the beans if they'll be punished for it so all the corruption and evil goings-on will still be there, we just won't hear about it on the evening news.

So yes, the sources must remain anonymous if we want them to still uncover scandals because if they aren't assured of anonymity then they'll disappear and we'll get no inside scoop, whether its for corruption in the White House or who Bobby Brown is sleeping with these days.

I voted 'I'm male and I'd protect my source.'

I'm with Rlyss, sources need to feel protected, or they simply won't giv the information anymore. I would keep my source protected if it came to it in hopes to make a point.

I wouldn't betray my source. Not only would I botch my (hypothetical) career as a journalist, but such a betrayal would deprive me of my sense of dignity.

The problem with court cases like this, is that they set precedent.

If he was forced to talk, then it would harm any other person who might wish to be a whistleblower. Seeing that a reporter suffered a jail sentence rather then give up a source will encourage insiders to continue to give information.

What's next? Doctor/patient & lawyer/client privilege?
With a legal precedent set, issues like this are also at stake.

To be honest I'm not sure what sex has to do with this issue, but I would not divulge the source of my information if I were a journalist and confidentiality was one of the agreements made between me and my source.

Journalists live or die by their credibility with their sources. If you undermine the trust a source places in you, then you are ruined as far as getting information out of them goes.

However, there's another issue here, that of contempt. Should they have aired the tape? It's hard for me to say on the basis of what's here, but if there was serious risk of prejudicing the investigation, then I would say they are in contempt, and might be doing more harm than good by breaking the story.

And to the person who said the news corps should be regulated to remove 'spin' from their reports, do you not see how dangerous that is? Spin and bias are an accepted part of news journalism. Everyone is biased, about everything. It's human nature. Maybe when our news is disseminated to us by our robot overlords, it will be totally objective, but Governments closing down newspapers because of their 'spin'... That's banana republic territory.

The BBC model is a good one. It receives its funding through a licence fee, paid by every British owner of a TV set. It gets a charter from the Government, setting out its aims and objectives, generally related to 'public service' broadcasting. In this way, it is beholden to nobody. It has no shareholders, no advertisers, and no vested interests. It's interesting to see it go up against the Government, as it did over the Dr David Kelly affair.

True.

When they had the trial for the guy that killed the two schoolgirls,my friend at the BBC hinted that the accused had a history of such actions but the entire media industry agreed to not broadcast any of this for fear of jeapordising the judicial process.
If a prosecutor is not allowed to present previous convictions in a case (except at time of sentence) then the media should be prevented from doing so.

I can't understand how it's possible to find a non-biased jury for high profile crimes in the US. The Media broadcasts anything they think might get higher ratings, at the cost of justice.

I wouldn't reveal the source. While I was serving my possible 6 months, I'd write letters to every congressman, senator, ACLU leader, civil rights proponent I could get the address for.

Although I do have the childish urge to walk up to the judge and say "Reveal this!" as I slap him in the face.... Oh well. :)

Not so much that they agreed not to, more that it was highly illegal for them to do so. You could tell that all the papers had tons of background info on Huntley because as soon as his verdict was in, they ran with all the juicy stuff they couldn't use before. And this stuff is heavily enforced. If the BBC were to be found in contempt too many times, chances are their charter would be gone.

I get the impression it's not so heavily enforced in America... My gut instinct in reading coverage of the Scott Peterson case is that there's no way he could have had a fair trial. They moved the trial, big deal, the story was EVERYWHERE. Either it's not enforced, or US news outlets take the enormous fines on the chin. Presumably they can absorb them because all their news outlets are owned by a handful of corporations. It's getting that way here, but not to the same degree.

Usually the best thing to protect the source. However, the press should not be involved in the cover up or commission of a crime. Revealing a source to protect another from a crime is not neccessarily answering to the government--it is answering to the society.

All protections should have their limitations. However the limitations need to be clearly defined.

The press should not be above the law. If a crime had to be committed for them to get information then protecting that source is a crime. Replace reporter with citizen and this isn't an issue.

This is not the same as whistleblowers who report information legally.