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A federal judge has set the stage for an unusual clash over assertions by reporters for four news organizations that they need not disclose the names of their sources, a traditional journalistic practice that underpins much of news reporting in Washington.
U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson late last week ordered journalists at the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Associated Press and Cable News Network to reveal who in the government may have disclosed derogatory information to them about Wen Ho Lee, a former nuclear weapons scientist who was the chief suspect in an espionage case.
I'd like to get Jeff Gerth under oath myself...
In general, I of course am all for journalists protecting their sources. But, the thing about sources is that they reveal information because they have their own agenda. When journalists uncritically move that agenda forward, and then later find out they had been spun, the public interest shifts the other way. At some point the story becomes about whoever broadcast the erroneous information in the first place.