Internet journalist's sources should be kept confidential

THE ISSUE The owner of a Hawaii news Web site has been subpoenaed to name her confidential sources for recent articles.

A LAWYER is challenging the right of Internet journalist Malia Zimmerman to protect the identities of her confidential sources, mistakenly calling her a blogger. Zimmerman clearly derives her livelihood from gathering the news and disseminating it on her Hawaiireporter.com Web site and deserves the same protection given to more traditional journalists.

William McCorriston represents landowner James Pflueger in a lawsuit against the state and companies regarding the failure of the Ka Loko Dam on Kauai. Zimmerman published several articles about the failed dam on her Web site and was a consultant for ABC's news magazine "20/20" in its report of the tragedy.

Thirty-one states have "shield laws" allowing reporters to protect their sources' identities. Courts in Hawaii and 17 other states have recognized some form of reporters' privilege. The state Supreme Court ruled in 1961 that protection of confidential sources should be balanced against other issues.

Circuit Judge Gary Chang ordered Zimmerman to submit to McCorriston's questioning under oath. However, she can refuse to answer questions, and judges generally have ruled in civil cases that a reporter's refusal to identify sources merely negates the source-attributed information as evidence.

McCorriston's assertion that Zimmerman is a blogger is far off the mark. In fact, she might be Hawaii's only independent journalist who depends entirely on the Internet for distribution of news, albeit with her conservative spin.

The question of what constitutes a blogger and what protections should be provided has stalled a proposed federal shield law for more than two years. Former New York Times columnist William Safire told a Senate committee that he thinks "the lonely pamphleteer has the same rights" as the Times. Indeed, Aaron Barlow, author of the new book "The Rise of the Blogosphere," calls Ben Franklin "the patron saint of the blogs."

Nor must a journalist be on the spot at news events. Barlow points to legendary muckraker I.F. "Izzy" Stone, whose weekly political newsletter went to 70,000 homes. "What Stone discovered and what bloggers are rediscovering is that effective reporting entails a great deal more than direct observation," Barlow writes.

What makes a journalist's use of confidential sources an essential element of the First Amendment is that the person is "in the business of gathering news," Safire testified. That factor should be key.

Those considerations might be impossible to include in any legislation to create a federal shield law. Courts should be relied upon to use common sense in determining whether a person spreading news and opinions, whether door to door or across the Internet, needs certain rights in order to preserve the integrity of the First Amendment. Zimmerman clearly falls into that category.