From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media.

Bob Garfield is away for one more week.

I'm Mike Peska.

And I'm Brooke Gladstone.

This week, Time magazine held its nose and declared it would surrender documents with the name of a source to a grand jury investigating a possibly criminal leak. The leakers, who revealed the name of

CIA agent Valerie Plame, were senior administration officials. We know that because columnist Bob Novak

said so when he outed Plame. We don't know for sure if Novak gave up his source to the grand jury,

but we do know who didn't. New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Time Magazine reporter Matt Cooper. In an effort to protect their sources, they took their case all the way to the Supreme Court, which this week declined to hear it. That means Miller faces 18 months in jail. Cooper may be spared because of his magazine's 11th hour capitulation.

If Mr. Cooper from Time Magazine is forced to reveal a source, you could make an argument that Mr. Cooper's career as a reporter in this town could be over.

That goes for any Washington reporter, said Lucy Dowlish, head of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, who spoke to us in May of 2004.

You have to remember that the media often operate on leaks, particularly when it comes to national security issues.

And I think you could point to countless stories where great public good was done because information was leaked from government agencies.

Journalists keep their ethical obligation not to reveal confidential sources. They value it just as much as

doctors and lawyers and priests view their obligations to keep information confidential.

Most states have laws that shield reporters from revealing sources and most legal proceedings,

but the claim investigation is a federal case and there is no national shield law,

though most journalists and even a few senators believe there should be.

What's worse for Cooper and Miller, this is a criminal case, notoriously shield law resistant.

Adam Liptock is the New York Times legal reporter.

Unfortunately for them, they are confronted with just about the worst imaginable facts.

They are essentially eyewitnesses to the crime of someone disclosing the

identity of a undercover CIA agent, or at least that's the prosecutor's theory. That's the theory.

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