01:00 AM EST on Sunday, December 5, 2004

From a speech given Nov. 11 at the Yankee Quill Award banquet in Cambridge.

For almost all of my working life I have been dedicated to a simple premise: To know is better than not knowing -- being informed is better than ignorance.

Today, I find this premise being tested not only in the halls of government, but also among our public.

The government has found ways around constitutional law and the public, increasingly protective of individual privacy, is more supportive of the government than of the press.

The First Amendment is a powerful right that protects the press (As an aside, it has proved to be little help to broadcasters that face sanctions for distasteful speech, such as the Janet Jackson or Howard Stern cases.) Government has found it almost impossible to stop publication of information in newspapers. So it found a solution. If you can't criminalize publication, criminalize talking to reporters.

We see the results in our communities of the new HIPAA laws. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act provides huge fines, up to $250,000, for people who release electronic information kept on patients. It was designed to protect medical data bases. It has been interpreted to mean anyone releasing medically related information. Now police and rescue people are refusing to give out names of accident victims or even to confirm a death.

In Rhode Island, a federal judge in the trial of Providence Mayor Cianci, gagged the defense lawyers and prosecutors, telling them not to talk to the press. Someone leaked a surveillance tape to television reporter Jim Taricani, who broadcast it.

The judge, angry that someone broke his order, appointed a special investigator to find out who it was. The investigator went after the reporter.

In receiving the tape and putting it on the air, Taricani did nothing against the law. But because the judge criminalized the release of the tape, Taricani has been made a criminal for not disclosing information a court-appointed investigator wanted.

The case of Judith Miller of the New York Times is in many ways similar to the Taricani case. A person has broken the law by releasing information to a reporter. In this case, the information was the name of a CIA employee who worked undercover. It is a felony to disclose such a person's name. The CIA employee is Valerie Plame, and the reporter who took the name and published it is Robert Novak. So far, you've heard no involvement of the New York Times nor of Judith Miller.

But the prosecutor in the case has reason to believe Judith Miller talked to someone about the Plame story. The prosecutor demanded she tell them who she talked to. She has refused. A judge has ordered her to go to jail for contempt. A party in this case has released reporters from any promise of anonymity. Still, Miller fights on and the Times has pledged to fight with her. The contempt ruling is being appealed.

What I see in the Miller case is an attack that undercuts our ability to report. What the prosecutor wants to know is "Who do you talk to?" And what the Times and Miller are saying is "None of your business."

You and I know we talk to all kinds of people every day. Some are honorable, some are not. Some are trying to openly inform the public, some are spinning lies. Still, reporters have to talk to people so we can find out what's going on. A lot of what they hear, perhaps most of it, will never get into print.

It's called reporting. It is the freedom of one citizen to talk to another without fearing the government. It is the freedom to listen as well as to speak. It is the right of free inquiry. So I wish The Times and Miller well.

What can we do about it?

First of all, let's admit the press is getting a lot of bad press. The people who are telling the citizens about the press are either angry at us, advancing their own cause, or trying to get even.

When President Clinton was in trouble with Monica Lewinsky, his protectors tried to turn it into a story about the press. You heard the spin: It was no story. It was tabloid journalism. There were more serious issues we should pay attention to. The political professionals have spent years learning to position themselves against the press. Over 20 years, Republicans rebuilt their party, largely by a constant campaign of invective on talk radio against the liberal media.

Sometimes we face attack within our own family, such as during labor negotiations. These attacks are local, but they are aimed at our readers and advertisers. In cities like Portland, Maine, Seattle, Baltimore and Providence, the theme has been how management is hurting their own newspapers. In Providence, for three years our own reporters and editors told the public why they shouldn't buy our newspaper. This was going on -- I will note -- simultaneously with prize-winning work on The Station nightclub fire.

And in some cases, the stories being told about us are legitimate accounts of our own failings. They are stories of fabrication and plagiarism, such as Jack Kelly at USA Today, Jason Blair at the New York Times, and forged Bush papers on CBS.

We should be telling our own story. We should be telling people what we believe in, what we want to achieve, and how we are doing it.

My model for doing this is Jim Smith, who edits the Record-Journal in Meriden, Conn. He writes a column in his paper in which he explains what journalism is about. In 2003, the American Society of Newspaper Editors had an award category called a "Passion for Journalism." Jim won for columns he wrote on subjects such as why some obits have bad news and why cops shouldn't arrest reporters for asking questions. And this fall, he won at the New England Associated Press for the work his paper did to make public the names of jurors in a criminal trial. Not only did the newspaper publish columns, it fought a vigorously in the courts and won. Jim also is a Yankee Quill recipient.

This fight for information, to keep our sources and ourselves protected, and to be free to report and publish what we see fit, is a legal fight. It must be pursued in the courts.

The freedoms we exercise daily are not important to the attorneys general, prosecutors, and police we deal with. I know that is a harsh thing to say, but it is my experience that they have little regard for anybody's Constitutional rights, let alone those of an annoying reporter asking questions in the middle of the night. They want to win cases, and they want to avoid public scrutiny.

It is judges in courts that enforce the Bill of Rights, and it is increasingly to the courts which we have to turn. Court fights are expensive and often they take a long time -- but they are important.

In April, a judge in Taunton, Mass., Superior Court ordered the press not to publish the name of a witness in a hearing concerning James Porter, infamous as a convicted pedophile priest. The witness was an adult who asked to testify decades after the crime. There were several newspapers covering the case. Only two appealed the judges ruling, a clear prior restraint. They were The New Bedford Standard Times and The Providence Journal. We won the appeal. Not in time to effect our news stories but certainly reestablishing constitutional law in the Massachusetts courts was important.

There are many examples of such fights in New England.

Earlier, I mentioned the HIPAA laws and how police wouldn't release information from their routine traffic reports. In Rhode Island, The Newport Daily News is in court testing the fire department's view of HIPAA.

The Hartford Courant is in court fighting "super sealing" - a practice in which not only were cases sealed, their very existence was not public.

The Cape Cod Times is suing to get the names of the sheriff departments "reserve deputies." Although not public employees, they carry replicas of deputy sheriff badges, and the sheriff's department employees process their applications.

The Providence Journal is fighting a contempt citation brought because we published a two-year-old file photo of a trial witness after a judge ordered the media not to photograph the witness.

I do not have a rousing conclusion to this talk. This is not a fight you win. All of the principles we are in court today to defend are well established in law. But judges do not automatically uphold open trials or condemn prior restraint. Each generation of public officials must be taught anew that citizens take their freedoms seriously and will fight for them with ferocity.

It falls on us to fight, not because we have special privilege, it falls on us because we are the day to day practitioners of First Amendment freedoms - it is part of our work; it's just part of the job.

Joel Rawson is the executive editor of The Journal. He received a Yankee Quill Award last month from the New England Society of Newspaper Editors.