Reporter risks ruin to protect sources
Making history is not always fun, particularly when fighting for a principle could lead to financial ruin.
Reporter Toni Locy, a Washington County native, faces a $500-a-day fine — possibly escalating to $5,000 a day plus jail time — since a federal judge last week found her in contempt of court for refusing to name confidential sources who talked to her about the potential connection a former Army scientist had to the 2001 anthrax attacks.
USA Today, which published the stories and employed Locy at the time, is paying her legal bills. But U.S. Judge Reggie B. Walton of Washington, D.C., another Washington County native, is considering prohibiting USA Today — or anyone other than Locy — from paying any contempt fines that he imposes. Locy said she plans to appeal the contempt ruling.
“Reporters don’t have subpoena power; there are limits to where we can go,” said Locy, 48, who now teaches journalism at West Virginia University in Morgantown. “So we need insiders, people with a conscience. We need to know about abuses of power.
“In our democracy, a robust press is crucial to making sure government is accountable,” she said.
Locy has worked at The Associated Press, The Washington Post and The Boston Globe. She began her career at The Pittsburgh Press after graduating from WVU in 1981. Locy is the oldest of six children whose mother was a coal miner.
Lucy A. Dalglish, executive director of the Washington-based Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said Walton’s contempt charge against Locy is the most egregious of a recent spate of court decisions against journalists who refuse to identify confidential sources.
“If this is allowed to stand, no one will be able to report on a federal investigation until charges have been brought,” Dalglish said. “If no one could do that in the anthrax case, that would’ve done an incredible disservice to the American public.”
Five people died after being exposed in fall 2001, shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, to anthrax spores sent through the U.S. mail. News outlets and the Washington offices of two Democratic U.S. senators received anthrax-contaminated letters. The FBI continues to investigate the case. No charges have been filed.
Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft publicly identified Steven Hatfill, a former bioweapons expert for the Army, as a “person of interest” in the investigation. Hatfill has sued Ashcroft, the U.S. Justice Department and the FBI, accusing them of violating his privacy rights. The federal Privacy Act limits the disclosure of personal information by government officials.
Walton said identifying Locy’s sources would help Hatfill pursue his lawsuit.
The main story in question was published in May 2003 and reported that the FBI had Hatfill under round-the-clock surveillance. Locy reported that sources said the investigation focused on Hatfill because many investigators believed he was behind the anthrax mail attacks. Those sources requested anonymity because the anthrax probe remained active.
Hatfill’s Washington-based lawyer, Mark Grannis, declined to comment beyond court documents he has filed on behalf of his client. In a May 9 memorandum, Grannis addressed Locy’s and other reporters’ contention that they should be allowed to keep sources confidential.
Grannis argued journalists “have no right to withhold evidence that private citizens need in order to obtain justice.”
In an Aug. 13 opinion, Walton wrote that allowing journalists the privilege of always protecting confidential sources — even when they have “allegedly illegally leaked information” — can have “the perverse effect” of preventing someone such as Hatfill from repairing “his good name, reputation and ability to earn a living.”
Bob Dubill, 71, executive editor at USA Today when Locy wrote the two stories at issue, said he was “sort of taken aback by this notion of judges requiring reporters to provide sources.”
Sometimes, promising sources confidentiality is the only way to ensure the public receives the full story, Dubill said.
“That’s what Toni did in her coverage of the anthrax-letter attacks,” Dubill said. “That was a story with intense public interest. People were scared and, in some cases, petrified. Sources in stories like that won’t come forth in the future if they can’t rely on confidentiality.”
Dubill described Locy in her post-9/11 reporting as dedicated and tenacious in “trying to draw a picture for our readers.”
That cannot be allowed to cease happening, according to Kellen Henry, 21, a WVU senior who took Locy’s media law class last semester.
Henry drafted a petition asking Walton to reverse his contempt decision. She circulated it to journalists and journalism students at WVU. Within hours, it made its way to the national office of the Society of Professional Journalists in Indianapolis.
“Journalists shouldn’t be used as an investigative arm of the justice system,” said Henry, a staff writer for WVU’s paper, The Athenaeum.
“People open the paper and they want to know the truth. If the government or legal system is leaning on us and taking our information, it’s going to hinder the public from making informed decisions.”
Following Henry’s lead, and in response to Locy’s case, the Society of Professional Journalists released a statement urging immediate passage of a shield law. That would protect journalists and their confidential sources. The U.S. House of Representatives passed a version of a federal shield law in October. A Senate vote on its version is pending.
Walton continues to review whether to hold former CBS reporter James Stewart in contempt for refusing to reveal sources during his coverage of the anthrax investigation.
In his August opinion, the judge also ordered Newsweek reporters Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman and Washington Post report Allan Lengel to reveal their sources. The Associated Press quoted attorneys involved in the case as saying those journalists had cooperated in revealing information after their sources identified themselves to Hatfill’s lawyers.
Walton quashed subpoenas filed on behalf of Hatfill to obtain further information from ABC, The Washington Post, Newsweek, CBS, The Associated Press, the Baltimore Sun and The New York Times.
In the meantime, Locy said she worries about her financial situation and possible imprisonment. But she doesn’t begrudge Hatfill his rights.
“He has every right to sue,” Locy said. “I do not challenge that right. There’s just got to be a way to make him as whole as possible without trampling on the First Amendment.”
