From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

And I'm Bob Garfield.

Last week, New York Times reporters Jeff Girth and James Risen invoked what they believe is their First Amendment privilege not to reveal anonymous sources.

The wrinkle here is that those sources, presumably government employees, provided the erroneous

information that led to scientist Wen Ho Lee being smeared in print over allegations about the passing of nuclear secrets to China in 1999.

Lee, who was held in solitary confinement for nine months and whose reputation was destroyed, wants to sue for violation of his rights under the Privacy Act.

In order to do that, he needs to identify the government agencies that spread the erroneous accusations to the press in the first place.

To do that, he needs the reporters to identify their sources, but they don't want to, despite an order from a federal judge to comply.

Lucy Douglas, Executive Director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, says this court order is very dangerous territory.

And she joins me now from Washington, D.C.

Lucy, welcome back to O.T.M. Thank you very much, Bob.

All right, so why is this territory so dangerous?

It's been about 30 years since the U.S. Supreme Court has directly confronted this issue.

And in fact, in the last 10 years, I think we've only had five journalists sentenced to jail for refusing to release

confidential source information. So to have five of them all at once in the same case in such a

high-profile situation, and they're all from major news organizations, I think it's a fairly

dramatic case. Yeah, the other three are not within the New York Times,

but have been ordered to testify in the same case by Judge Thomas Penfield-Jackson, correct?

Yes, they're from the Los Angeles Times, the Associated Press, and CNN.

Well, at the risk of asking you to belabor the obvious,

why is it so important to journalists and to sources and to democracy for the privilege of confidentiality to remain a lot?

Journalists view their duty to keep confidential information confidential the same way that doctors and lawyers and priests view their duty to keep confidential information confidential.

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