Open doors. Open books. Open microphones and minds.
Openness is the very foundation of our nation's democracy.
As passed last week on a 398-21 vote, the legislation would for the first time establish standards that limit the power of federal officials to compel reporters to testify or to disclose documents and unidentified sources used in their reporting. Similar standards protect reporters - and more importantly, their sources - in most states, including Montana.
But the federal government has never provided such safeguards, and in recent years has increasingly demanded that reporters reveal their confidential sources - and has jailed those who would not comply. That's a dangerous business in a democracy, where the Fourth Estate is the essential watchdog of the public's right to know.
Make no mistake. We are not suggesting the press be allowed to run amok. This newspaper rarely grants sources a promise of anonymity. We believe stories are more credible if all parties are named and known.
But there are times when sources rightfully request, and are given, anonymity to protect their livelihoods or even their lives - when there is simply no other way for a story to make its way into the bright light of day.
Earlier this year, news reports on the inadequate care given Iraq war veterans at Walter Reed Army Medical Center would not have been possible without confidential sources. So, too, did such sources provide the initial accounts of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison, and of illegal steroid use in Major League Baseball.
Most famously, a confidential source was the bedrock for Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's reporting on the Watergate break-in and subsequent coverup. W. Mark Felt was the No. 2 official at the FBI when he leaked information to the Washington Post's young reporters, allowing them to unravel the connections between a burglary of Democratic offices at the Watergate Hotel, the re-election campaign of President Richard Nixon and corruption in his administration.
Felt revealed his identity as “Deep Throat” more than 30 years later. Woodward and Bernstein kept mum, as they had promised, over decades of speculation and accusation.
Recent years have seen heavier-handed demands by the federal government, most notably federal prosecutors, for reporters to reveal their confidential sources, or be found in contempt of court and sent to jail.
The danger, as we've said before, is to the public, more so than to journalists or their sources. The Free Flow of Information Act would, at its core, protect the public's essential and irreplaceable right to know.
Shield laws reflect the belief that democracy works best when the public has a steady diet of information about its government and all its workings. It's good to know what the government wants you to know - but it's also good to know what the government doesn't want you to know.
We are disturbed by the Bush administration's threat to veto the legislation so overwhelmingly approved last week. Administration officials claim the measure would jeopardize national security.
But journalists and the shield law's bipartisan authors have actually softened the measure in response to the administration's concerns, allowing a federal judge to compel disclosure of documents or sources if doing so would prevent an act of terrorism or if a source would be “critical” to resolving a criminal case.
Another exception was added last week, allowing a judge to order disclosure if it were “essential” to the investigation or prosecution of a leak of classified information - and if a judge finds that the unauthorized leak “has caused or will cause significant and articulable harm to the national security.”
And in a concession to business groups that previously opposed the bill, the measure would allow a judge to force the disclosure of individuals who divulge trade secrets or private medical records protected by federal law.
The compromises, we believe, are good ones. It is time now to move ahead with this long overdue federal protection of the public's right to know. Of your right to insist that our government open the windows and doors and let the public discourse flow through - freely and unfettered.
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