Senate president proposes a shield law
Bill seeks to guard identity of sources
Saying he believes that confidential sources help insure complete and accurate news reporting, state Senate President Robert E. Travaglini filed a bill yesterday that would create a shield law for journalists in Massachusetts.
The law proposed by Travaglini would bar any branch of government from using subpoenas or other methods to force reporters to name sources, except in extreme cases of overriding public interest, such as when the information is deemed necessary to prevent a terrorist attack, he said.
''For the most part, I believe that journalists use these resources in a responsible way," the East Boston Democrat said. ''Unless there are some extraordinary circumstances, they shouldn't be forced to reveal their sources."
Travaglini said the bill was filed at least in part in response to the recent cases of New York Times reporter Judith Miller and television newsman Jim Taricani of Rhode Island, who were both sanctioned by judges after they refused to reveal their sources.
Miller recently spent 85 days in federal prison for refusing to reveal the source of information about the identity of an undercover CIA operative. Taricani, a reporter for WJAR-TV in Providence, served four months of home confinement for refusing to reveal the source of an FBI surveillance tape.
Travaglini also said that a group of local news executives recently made a ''compelling case" that journalists in Massachusetts, and the public, could benefit from a shield law.
The executive who led the delegation, Charles J. Kravetz, the news director of New England Cable News, said he believes that public and judicial support for the news media has waned since the days of the Nixon administration and Watergate, to the point where journalists now need the protection of law.
''We are in a period of time where what we journalists see as the obvious protections of the First Amendment are not necessarily seen that way by the judges in the state court," said Kravetz, who was a senior executive producer at WCVB-TV (Channel 5) in the 1980s when reporter Susan Wornick was threatened with jail for refusing to reveal a source.
The legislation proposed by Travaglini would prevent reporters from being forced to name their sources, regardless of whether those sources were promised confidentiality by the reporter.
The bill also would protect materials gathered by reporters but not necessarily used in a news report, including: notes, outtakes, photographs or negatives, video or sound tapes, and film.
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report. 