What reporters everywhere could learn from a music critic

MIAMI -- In the watered-down world of journalism these days, it was fitting that the annual convention of the Investigative Reporters and Editors wrapped up over the weekend in a hotel overlooking Biscayne Bay.

Our news world is reeling right now, faster than the bone fisherman who head out of here every morning on fancy charter boats. TV operations and newspapers are winding in their lines quicker than you can say "sink or swim" as viewers and readers fish elsewhere for their daily news.

Foreign reporters look on in amazement as the stars of what's left of traditional American investigative journalism debate their dwindling futures and drown their sorrows. From the Middle East to Korea to South America, they are just grabbing hold of the press freedoms that we have take for granted in the U.S.

A reporter from Brazil excitedly told me why his newspaper series targeting corrupt public officials was so well-received. "One of the fastest ways to become rich in our country is to become a politician," he said. The reason that system festered is because, until recently, news organization had no legal access to politicians' financial records. The politicians just took whatever public funds they wanted and spent them however they wished.

As I listened to the hard-nosed reporter from Brazil, I was thinking about a reporter 1,190 miles away in Chicago.

Jim DeRogatis is not an investigative reporter. He is a music critic for the Chicago Sun-Times. Nevertheless, a couple of years ago DeRogatis broke a very big news story and because of it has found himself the flag-bearer for the First Amendment.

In 2002 DeRogatis received a videotape that allegedly showed Chicago singer R. Kelly having sex with a girl who was in her early teens. He turned the suspected child pornography over to police the day he received it. After all, it was evidence of a suspected crime.

DeRogatis also did what every good journalist would have done in that situation. He reported the story. Now, R. Kelly is on trial in Cook County Criminal Court on child sex charges. Mr. Kelly, who's sometimes vile music is protected by the same free speech amendment that protects reporters, is fighting the charges. Kelly claims that the female in the tape wasn't underage and that the man in the tape wasn't him, anyway.

But this isn't about an accused child pornographer. It is about Jim DeRogatis and what happened to him in the middle of the Kelly court case.

Kelly's crack defense team had subpoenaed the music critic to testify about how he got the tape, who gave it to him, what he did with it, who he talked to about it, etc.

Cook County Judge Vincent Gaughan made a big stink about dragging DeRogatis into court and making him testify. Maybe Judge Gaughan thought he was presiding over a terror tribunal at Guantanamo, but DeRogatis wasn't responsible for helping either prosecutors convict Kelly or defense lawyers get him off of the charges.

In this country, a free press has to be able to do its job independently … whether the story is about a musician/alleged pornographer or a politician/alleged crook.

So when DeRogatis was hauled into court, he had no choice but to defend himself against the intrusion on his rights as a journalist and our rights as Americans to have him and any other reporters gather information legally.

Even though some coverage of DeRogatis' testimony made it seem as though he only "took the Fifth" like a Chicago Outfit boss would, in the same breath he also pleaded the First.

"I respectfully decline to answer the question on the advice of counsel, on the grounds that to do so would contravene the reporter's privilege, the special witness doctrine, my rights under the Illinois Constitution, and the First and Fifth Amendments of the United States Constitution," DeRogatis stated 15 times from the witness stand.

Each time, he emphasized the word "First." That is the freedom of speech and press amendment to the Constitution.

Judge Gaughan didn't buy into DeRogatis' use of the First Amendment, which is unfortunate, because that's the one that is the most important. Gaughan let DeRogatis off the hook based on his taking of the Fifth. You see, possession of child pornography is itself a crime. So even though the reporter didn't know that it was child pornography when he opened and viewed the unsolicited package in 2002, technically he could be charged with something similar to one of the charges R. Kelly faces.

So he took the Fifth and the First.

And because of it, he should be canonized by all of the investigative reporters who gathered in Miami, moaning about the decline of serious reporting.