Prying Out Sources

A new reporting peril

While arresting a drug dealer in Coeur l'Alene, Idaho, one August night in 1972, Narcotics Agent Michael A. Caldero shot and wounded the suspect's companion, who tried to flee. He eventually recovered, the pusher was convicted, and the shooting incident went largely unquestioned--until Lewiston Tribune Reporter James E. ("Jay") Shelledy revived it a year later in a six-part series on the state drug enforcement agency.

Shelledy quoted the attorney general in charge of the drug agency and an unnamed "police expert" as calling the shooting unnecessary. Within months, the agency was reorganized, the attorney general was voted out of office, and Agent Caldero was fired.

Other journalists have won prizes for such successful investigative reporting.

Shelledy earned a jail sentence. In what is being called a stunning setback for press freedom, the Supreme Court last week declined to review his contempt citation for refusing to identify the "police expert" in a pretrial deposition for a libel suit filed against him and the paper by Caldero.

The order is new evidence that the court may be unwilling to extend any more constitutional protections for journalists. The court had ruled in 1972 that reporters can be compelled to testify in cases involving crimes they have witnessed, but never extended that requirement to other legal proceedings. If courts in other states embrace the Idaho decision, any aggrieved citizen can force a reporter to disclose his source--or go to jail--simply by suing for libel.

That prospect troubles many journalists. "The real danger is that the ruling will make some newspapers gun-shy about running certain stories," says Jack Nelson, Washington bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times. Adds Investigative Reporter Carl Bernstein, of Watergate fame: "There is just that much more risk that you'll end up in the slam."

Shelledy, 34, who must still face Caldero's libel suit, is scheduled to begin his 30 days in jail this week. "There are places I'd rather be," says the journalist, now Tribune executive editor. He fears that more reporters may suffer because of libel actions. Indeed, an Idaho judge two months ago denied a bid by the Twin Falls Times-News and two reporters to protect the identity of sources on a story that had provoked a $36 million libel suit.

They were spared a possible jail term, Judge Theron Ward said, only to avoid "making martyrs out of them."

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