In a story already making international headlines, United States District Court Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson has held five reporters in contempt of court for refusing to reveal sources in the news coverage of now-cleared scientist Wen Ho Lee. Here’s the Associated Press version, here’s Reuters. If that’s not enough, here’s Washington Post, L. A. Times, The International Herald Times as adapted from the New York Times, and Reporters Without Borders. Nor is this the first time this month that a judge has ordered reporters to cough up the names of sources. This is a bigger story than the fact that, as I write, Google has begun trading, and is around $100 per share.
Does the judge’s name sound familiar to you? You probably remember him as the Judge in the Microsoft Trial, where his Findings of Fact included the “Fact” that Microsoft is a monopoly, and web clients are not operating systems. Alright, the guy is already controversial.
Pro: these reporters did — we must assume inadvertently — contribute to a media storm of inaccurate, libelous information being disseminated against one scientist. Wen Ho Lee is going to have to explain himself on every job interview he gets for the rest of his life. He spent time in a jail cell in solitary confinement despite the fact that he had been convicted of nothing. He did plead guilty to one count of “improper handling” of data. His case was so egregious that he got an apology from the President of the United States. You cannot blame Mr. Lee for being unhappy. Frankly, these reporters should be unhappy they were told lies and manipulated into regurgitating them.
Con: these reporters gave their solemn word that sources would be confidential. If they go back on that, they can kiss credibility and future confidential sources goodbye. This is true both personally and for reporters in general. That means fewer whistle-blowers will come forward in general, which in turn will make it harder to get information out of any company or government entity beyond the prepared press statements. This is bad for democracy, and bad for free markets.
Make your own opinion.
I think it’s wrong to consider the PRO side as just being about retribution for Wen Ho Lee.
If we think about whistle-blowing as an instrument for finding out about it secret wrong-doing, then it can go wrong in two ways. False-negatives occur when there’s wrong-doing but no one blows the whistle. Loss of confidentiality will (I suspect) increase false-negatives. False-positives occur when the media report a problem that isn’t real– as in this case. Loss of confidentiality will (I suspect) decrease false positives, because the accuser must publicly take responsibility for the allegation. (These are sometimes called Type I and Type II errors, although I can never remember which is which.)
Thinking about it in this way, there are two questions. First, how do we want to balance the risk of false-positives against the risk of false-negatives? At some point, the two trade off. Yet we should also ask: Are there better instruments for mitigating the risk of false-positives than breaching confidentiality?
Nice blog, just wanted to say I found you through Google