The Price We Pay

It's another sad day for journalists across the country. Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams of the San Francisco Chronicle were sentenced to prison for not revealing their sources, the ones who had leaked grand jury testimony by athletes in steroid questioning.

If you do not know the story, Fainaru-Wada and Williams wrote a series of articles for the Chronicle about the BALCO steroid issue and later penned a book about it called "Game of Shadows." One of the most important parts of these writings is the grand jury testimony of athletes such as Barry Bonds. Since this testimony is sealed, Fainaru-Wada and Williams' sources committed a crime by leaking it to them. Even though they were subpoenaed, the two writers kept their word and refused to give up their sources.

Now they face prison for it. Yes, it's a journalist's duty as a citizen to comply with the law, but the writers did what they had to do to break an important story. It's too bad that they have to pay a price for uncovering the truth.

Update: Wright Thompson, a senior writer at ESPN.com, wrote a good column Friday morning about how these two men were doing a public service to Americans, but lost out to the government and the law.

---

There was one other thing I noticed online today. In the on-going drama between the Los Angeles Times and the Tribune Company, Mark Glaser at MediaShift suggests that Tribune sell the paper to the community and make it public.

It's an intriguing idea, and I actually do believe that the owner of a newspaper should at least be in the same state as the paper, but I question whether it's even plausible. Letting the public run a newspaper could water down journalism even more than it already is. Don't think that I'm a hypocrite because I'm a journalist-in-training writing a blog. It's just that blogging is one thing. Running a newspaper is another.