Threats to Freedom

One of Watergate's many side effects has been to evict from the public's attention the figure of the beleaguered reporter languishing in jail for refusing to name his news sources. The investigative reporter triumphant has replaced him and the controversy over disclosing confidential information has shifted from newsmen's notebooks to the Oval Office tapes. But this triumph is illusory. Across the country, reporters, editors and publishers still face a variety of judicial and legislative attacks that threaten basic press freedom.

The Supreme Court last month declined to hear an appeal of contempt citations against two Baton Rouge La., reporters, Larry Dickenson of the State Times and Gibbs Adams of the Morning Advocate. The Journalists' offence: they published accounts of an open federal court hearing in defiance of a court order. The Reporter's committee for freedom of the Press, a Washington-based group that offers legal aid to endangered colleagues, said last week that the high court's refusal to hear the case "means that any judge can order a newspaper not to publish any news items, and the newspaper must obey that gag for as long as it takes to appeal. By that time the item may no longer be newsworthy." The dispute's background bears out that bleak interpretation. In 1971 Federal District Judge E. Gordon West ordered journalists covering the public hearing of a conspiracy case against a local civil rights leader not to write about he proceeding. West fined Adams and Dickinson $300 each when they ignored his directive, issued, he said, "to avoid undue publicity."

The newsmen appealed, and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals later rapped West by declaring that "censorship in any form-judicial censorship include-is simply incompatible with the dictates of the constitution and the concepts of free press." It also described the conflict as a "civil libertarian's nightmare." Nevertheless, the appeals court refused to lift either the contempt citation or the fine. Reason: the court said that Dickinson and Adams should have obtained an injunction against West's order before publishing their stories. Because of the Supreme Court's refusal to intervene, that West's would be considered binding until an appeal could be processed.

Critical Analysis. Another current case involves prior restraint even more directly. When Supreme Court ruled against the Nixon Administration in the Pentagon papers case, it repeated its traditional distaste for prepublication censorship. Despite this widely publicized ruling, the CIA for six months has been delaying the appearance of a book by two former Government employees. The authors and their publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, have brought suit to free the full manuscript At issue is The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, a critical analysis of the agency that Victor Marchetti a former CIA man, had contracted to write for Knopf in March 1972. But there was a hitch During Government service, both Marchetti and Co-Author John Marks, formerly a State Department employee, had signed secrecy agreements "promising not to publish "information relating to the national defense and security" without the consent of department chiefs. When CIA officials learned of Marchetti's plan, they obtained a restraining order forbidding the disclosure of any classified material he may have seen at the CIA.

After Marchetti submitted the finished 517-page manuscript to CIA scrutiny, the agency demanded 339 deletions later reduced to 225). Marchetti complains that some of the censored materials with CIA matters widely described elsewhere. His lawyers argue that department secrecy agreements violate First Amendment rights real firmed in the Pentagon papers decision, and they want the Government to prove national security risks in each deleted passage.

Equal Space. A hot new area of contention to involves their attempts to force publication "balance" their news and editorial columns. Last summer the Florida Supreme Court upheld a neglected 60-year-old state law requiring a newspaper to give equal space to the political candidates it criticizes. The ruling followed the Miami Herald's refusal to print rebuttals from a legislative candidate the paper had opposed editorially.

The Florida court said that; to assure fairness in campaigns, the an assailed candidate has to be providedan equivalent opportunity to respond: otherwise, not only would the candidate be hurt, but also the people would be deprived of both sides of the controversy. " The Herald, which is appealing the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court contends that the state has no more right to order publication of certain material than it has to forbid the printing of other stories. Says Herald Attorney Dan Paul: "This decision puts the state in the editor's chair." Broader public access to opinion pages is laudable goal in theory. But in practice, if editors were compelled to give space to every candidate who considered himself "assailed," political commentary and even reportage would be inhibited.

Journalists still face imprisonment for refusing to name their sources. St Petersburg Times Reporter Lucy Ware Morgan has been sentenced to five months in jail unless she tells a Pasco County judge where she got her information for a story on a grand jury that had decided not to issue any indictments. An appeal is pending, and Times Editor Eugene Patterson is attempting to go to jail in his reporter's place. Patterson may get half his wish. The judge is considering whether the editor exposed himself to contempt charges when he ordered Mrs. Morgan not to name her source. "If I can't keep her out of jail now," Patterson said last week, "I'd at least like to go with her."

Some of the current problems have a bizarre humor. Alabama reporters are aghast at a new state law requiring all journalists covering state news to report their personal finances, list their employers and swear that they have no ties with any firm doing business with the Alabama government. The statute was enacted almost by accident; legislators included newsmen in an ethics bill originally aimed at public officials. That addition and others, it was thought, would kill the entire passage. Instead, the measure was enacted. Two Alabama papers are appealing the law, which carries a sentence of ten years in jail and a $10,000 fine for violators. But Governor George Wallace has already appointed an ethics commission to administer the new edict. As its chairman, Wallace last week chose Leslie Wright, president of Samford University in Birmingham, who is widely known for his ironfisted censorship of a student newspaper.

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