Cases pit US crime fighters against a free press

"We see nothing that would have justified what they did here. It was a secret invasion of the privacy of that reporter and of the newsgathering process," says Dave Tomlin, a veteran reporter and assistant to AP's president. "The fact that an action of this kind is so very rare is a good indication of how extreme it is."

In Texas, Vanessa Leggett remains in jail after refusing to turn over research to the FBI, saying it would compromise confidentiality agreements with sources. In a Newsweek article penned from jail, she writes, "How could future sources feel secure confiding in me, if I didn't keep my word to those involved...?"

Despite such setbacks, journalists are better off now than a century ago, when they were afforded virtually no protection. Today, 31 states and the District of Columbia have shield laws that protect journalists and sources. And freedom-of-information provisions didn't exist until the mid-1960s, about the same time courts began allowing the press more leeway.

"Roughly 90 percent of the First Amendment case law, and much of it protective of speech and press, has come out since I first started teaching in this area" 40 years ago, says Robert O'Neil, director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression at the University of Virginia.

The branches of government have also come out in support of the media. A Senate committee voted a decade ago not to subpoena reporter phone records to see

who leaked information about Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, says Mr. Abrams, who represented a reporter involved. And President Clinton vetoed legislation similar to that being discussed tomorrow in Congress.

But some observers are skeptical about the current administration.

"It's only been in the last few months, since this administration took over, that we've been seeing this outbreak in Justice Department officials trying to get journalists to do their investigating for them," says Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. "It's an atmosphere, I guess, is the way I would describe it."

If there is in fact a shift in policy, it may be tough to convince the public that it's a bad thing. Media credibility has plummeted in recent years. In a poll released on July 4, the Freedom Forum's First Amendment Center reported that 46 percent of Americans think the press has too much freedom, up from 38 percent in 1997.

The people in the survey are "clearly not thinking about subpoenas; they're thinking about Geraldo [Rivera]," says Kenneth Paulson, executive director of the center.

Three-quarters say they expect the media to be a government watchdog. But even so, "if you have half the American public saying that freedom of the press goes too far, there won't be much public support for giving the news media the right to avoid subpoenas."

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