20 Pulitzer winners join
a drive to back Risen

By Emily Grannis
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
More than 100,000 people, including 20 Pulitzer Prize winners, have signed a petition submitted to President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder today urging the administration to rethink its policy of subpenaing journalists to reveal their sources.

http://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=9775

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Seven representatives of free press organizations announced the delivery of the petition at the National Press Club Thursday and called on the administration to drop its threatened subpena of New York Times reporter James Risen.

Risen has been fighting since 2007 to protect a confidential source he used in writing a book about the Central Intelligence Agency, and he joined the panel at the press conference today.

“The events today are part of a very strongly accelerated effort across this country to lance a boil of fear and intimidation,” said Norman Solomon, whose Institute for Public Accuracy and RootsAction.org started the petition.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, the Government Accountability Project, the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders were also represented on today’s panel, along with veteran journalist Phil Donahue.

“Freedom of the Press is the most important freedom,” said Delphine Halgand, the director of Reporters Without Borders’ Washington office. “It is the freedom that allows us to verify the existence of all other freedoms.”

Risen said the level of support generated by the petition "leaves me speechless.”

“I also know that it’s really not about me. It’s about some basic issues that affect all Americans and all journalists,” Risen said. “I’m willing to do this for the future of journalism . . . There’s no way to conduct aggressive investigative reporting without confidential sources.”

Panelists emphasized the importance of official government action beyond the promise Holder made this summer that no reporter will go to jail for doing his or her job. That could be little reassurance for Risen: in the past, journalists have been ordered to pay between $500 and $5,000 a day for refusing to name sources.

“Ultimately threats like these from the federal government must be addressed by the enactment of a meaningful shield law,” said Gregg Leslie, legal defense director for the Reporters Committee, referring to the reporters' shield law pending in the U.S. senate. He added that the petition provides an important show of public support for that effort. “This is the kind of thing that will prompt action." 

Courtney Radsch, advocacy director for the Committee to Protect Journalists, said the U.S. government should be standing up for press freedoms, rather than emulating the practice of anti-democratic governments in jailing journalists.

“I don’t think we want to join Cuba as the only country in the Western Hemisphere to have a jailed journalist,” she said. CPJ currently counts 124 journalists jailed worldwide for crimes like espionage, which is an accusation often leveled against journalists and their sources here. “These types of prosecutions send a dangerous signal to governments elsewhere,” Radsch said.

The U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va. (4th Circuit) ruled in July 2013 that the government can compel Risen to name his source. Risen appealed that decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, but in June the justices declined to take the case. Risen is now waiting for the Justice Department to decide whether to re-issue the subpena for his testimony.