Editorial: A reporter's close call and the need for a 'shield'

In September 2013, we wrote this in an editorial about the need for a federal shield law: "It seems like a frustrating but absolute fact of life that things that ought to be simple often take an exorbitantly long struggle to accomplish."

Now, more than a year later, the frustration continues. We continue to wait for a federal law that would strengthen and make consistent protections of journalists' rights to publish important information that government agencies seek to withhold. And, evidence of how fragile the protections are now continues to mount - including a nearby case in which a reporter narrowly avoided a fine and prison sentence for refusing to identify a source.

A state appeals court ruled this week that Joe Hosey, a Joliet-based reporter for Patch.com, will not have to pay a fine and go to prison for failing to reveal the source who gave him police reports including grisly details about a sensational double murder. Attorneys for one of the defendants in the case wanted to know the source of the leak, and a Will County judge was willing to force Hosey to tell, had it not been for the appeals court's declaration that the information about the leaker was not relevant to the case.

Hosey's situation played out while a federal shield law proposed by New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, with significant support from Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, slogged through Congress to virtual halt. In September 2013, the bill achieved a milestone when framers settled on the significant question of who qualifies as a protected journalist, and in May, the U.S. House passed an appropriations bill with an amendment providing landmark protections for journalists. But ultimately this fall, the shield-law effort stalled again in the Senate.

Had the federal law passed, effectively guaranteeing reporters the right to protect the identity of their sources, it could have spared reporters like Hosey or, for another example, FoxNews.com reporter Jana Winter, who fought a two-state battle for a year before avoiding prison for refusing to identify the source of information she reported about the Aurora, Colo., movie theater attack. But more important, it would have made the public, and not public officials, the final arbiters of the merits of information acquired from sources who may fear retribution for revealing government secrets.

The idea of a federal media shield law enjoys broad and bipartisan support in Congress. Sadly, politics and timing keep interfering with its passage. Meanwhile, as long as official agencies continue to seek to keep information hidden from the public, circumstances like the Hosey and Winter cases will continue to occur.

We hope Sen. Durbin and others in the Illinois congressional delegation will resume the fight until the long struggle for a seemingly simple protection at last produces a federal law.