The Girl Who Said No

A reporter must tell a court of law the name of his source of information if the name is material and relevant to a trial, the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled last week.

What may become a decisive case in defining freedom of the press was begun by a pretty brunette who said no. The girl: Marie Torre, 34, middle-browed radio and TV columnist of the New York Herald Tribune. A federal court in New York City asked her to name the "CBS spokesman" she quoted as saying that Singer Judy Garland "doesn't want to work . . . because something is bothering her [and] I wouldn't be surprised if it's because she thinks she's terribly fat." The three-man U.S. Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that the requested information was material and relevant in Singer Garland's $1,393,333 suit against CBS for libel and breach of contract.

Judge Potter Stewart, 43, who as chairman of the Yale Daily News in 1936-37 had his own college-day brushes with reporting, wrote the decision. He acknowledged that "compulsory disclosure of a journalist's confidential sources may entail an abridgment of press freedom by imposing some limitation upon the availability of news." But "the duty of a witness to testify in a court of law has roots as deep as the guarantee of a free press," which justifies "some impairment" of the First Amendment (on press freedom).

The Trib's President and Editor Ogden R. ("Brownie") Reid announced that the

Trib will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. If the court upholds the ruling, and Reporter Torre remains mum, she wili go to jail for ten days--and many a source for many a story that needs to be told will henceforth dry up.

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