New Yorker’s Toobin: Threat to Reporters on Sources Growing

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There’s a “growing list of cases in which journalists under threat of legal sanction, are being asked to identify their source,” Jeffrey Toobin writes in a New Yorker article taking a sobering look at the anonymous source problems facing reporters. He talks with media lawyers and journalism advocacy groups leaders alarmed by the increasing demands for reporter testimony and concludes the best hope may be in a qualified opinion by appellate Judge David S. Tatel, a member of the panel that rejected the appeal of the New York Times Judith Miller. Tatel said “reason and experience,as evidenced by the laws of forty-nine states and the District of Columbia . . support recognition of a privilege for reporters’ confidential sources.” (1/11/06)