Toni Locy, a former USA Today reporter, could face some tough and expensive decisions beginning next week.
Ms. Locy has defied a court order to reveal the sources she used in stories that named a government researcher as “a person of interest” in an FBI investigation into a string of post-9/11 anthrax attacks. A federal judge will decide as early as next week whether to fine Ms. Locy $5,000 a day for refusing to give up those names.
Courts in the last few years have been stepping-up pressure on reporters to identify sources used in politically sensitive stories, including pieces about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the steroids investigation of the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative, or Balco.
What makes Ms. Locy’s case different is that the judge may force her to pay the daily fines out of her own pocket. Ms. Locy now teaches journalism at West Virginia University, where she earns $75,000 a year. She says she has no savings to speak of. U.S. District Court Judge Reggie B. Walton has said he would raise the daily fine with each week that the dispute drags on — requiring her to pay $500 a day for the first week, $1,000 a day in the second week, and $5,000 a day in the third week. (Gannett Co., which publishes USA Today, has been paying for Ms. Locy’s legal bills.)
If Ms. Locy were to hold out for three weeks, she would owe $45,500, or about 60% of her salary. She said her journalism students have offered to hold a bake sale to raise some of the money, but she doesn’t even know if the judge would allow that because the funds would be coming from someone else. “I’ll be bankrupt in a matter of days,” Ms. Locy said in a telephone interview this weekhttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB120371390819286561.html
http://www.rcfp.org/news/2008/0219-con-judgef.html
Categories: Contempt · Fines · confidential sources
There are many ways to intimidate or silence journalists. One depressing tactic in this country is to jail them for refusing to divulge the names of confidential sources who have provided sensitive information for articles, or to turn over telephone logs, emails, memos or notebooks identifying those informants to whom reporters have pledged confidentiality. (I’m familiar with this approach, having spent 85 days in jail two summers ago for protecting such a source until he waived the pledge I’d given him.)
There may now be an alternative: bankrupting reporters who refuse to comply with subpoenas and court orders.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton — the same Judge Walton who presided over the Scooter Libby trial — found Toni Locy, a professor of journalism at West Virginia University and a former USA Today reporter, in contempt of court. She’d refused to divulge her sources for two articles she wrote about Steven J. Hatfill, a former Army scientist once at the heart of the government inquiry into the anthrax letter attacks of Oct. 2001, which killed five people.
Dr. Hatfill, long under suspicion but never charged with any crime, has sued the government for allegedly violating his privacy by leaking information about him and the investigation to the press. Ms. Locy is one of five reporters he subpoenaed to identify those anonymous government sources who he says ruined his reputation and career. (The anthrax case itself is unsolved.)
Judge Walton said he might fine Ms. Locy $500 a day for seven days, $1,000 a day for the following seven days, and $5,000 a day for the seven days after that if she continues to refuse to cooperate. In all, she could accumulate more than $45,500 in fines. What’s more, Judge Walton may bar her former employer, USA Today, or any other individual or news organization from helping her pay, as Dr. Hatfill’s lawyer has requested.http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120356120676681971.html
Categories: Contempt · Judith Miller · Sources
