Watergate. Enron. Abu Ghraib. Even steroids in baseball.

“Some of the most important stories in this country’s history were published for the benefit of the public based on confidential sources,” Channel 10 investigative reporter Jim Taricani said during a panel discussion at the Rhode Island Bar Association’s annual meeting Thursday.

“Right here in Rhode Island, we have a very famous story involving my friend Jack White,” Taricani said, referring to the former Channel 12 investigative reporter who died in 2005. “When he was a reporter for The Providence Journal, many of you know he published a story showing that President Nixon cheated on his income taxes, and much of that information, Jack told me, came from a confidential source.”

Reporters don’t like to use confidential sources, Taricani said.

“I think any journalist will tell you that we like to get all our information on the record,” he said. “Or if we can get documents, we like to be able to attribute those documents to someone or some agency. But that’s not always the case.”

In some cases, the only way to get a story is to use a confidential source, Taricani said in making the case for a federal shield law, which would give reporters a limited privilege to refuse to divulge their sources.

“We need a federal shield law because judges are putting journalists in jail,” he said.

Taricani noted, for example, that former New York Times reporter Judith Miller was jailed for contempt of court after refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating a leak naming Valerie Plame as a covert CIA agent.

And he cited his own case: In 2004, a federal judge sentenced Taricani to six months of probation, on home confinement, for defying a court order to reveal who illegally gave him a secret FBI videotape, which showed former Providence Mayor Vincent A. “Buddy” Cianci Jr.’s top aide, Frank E. Corrente, taking a bribe.

In recent years, some judges have issued contempt citations to journalists, saying the 1972 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Branzburg vs. Hayes rejected the contention that reporters have a First Amendment right to refuse to answer “relevant questions put to them in the course of a grand jury investigation or criminal trial.”

Taricani said such contempt citations have had “a chilling effect on the newsgathering process.”

For example, he said that in the wake of cases such as his and Miller’s, the company that owns Channel 10 — Media General, based in Richmond, Va. — has changed its policy on confidential sources. “If I want to offer a source confidentiality now, I have to ask that source to sign an affidavit drawn up by the company,” he said. The affidavit basically says that sources will be protected — but only up to a point. “If we are investigated and if we lose,” he said, “then you, the source, has to come forward.”

“You can imagine a reporter sitting down, trying to talk to a confidential source and saying, ‘Oh, by the way, could you sign this? Because I may have to give you up some time,’ ” Taricani said. “I tried it once, and I was laughed at. This is not good for journalism.”

And it is not good for the public, he said.

“There was one story I was working on some months ago involving this person who laughed at me,” Taricani said. “It was an important story that is not getting done. This particular person had some very important information that the public should know about. Hopefully, it will get out some day.”

Hopefully, Congress will pass a federal shield law this year.

Taricani noted the House of Representatives passed a shield law bill, called the Free Flow of Information Act, in March. “It has wide bipartisan support,” he said, adding that the main supporters include U.S. Rep. Mike Pence, an Indiana Republican.

Attention is now turning to the Senate. On Wednesday, U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Department of Justice would support a shield law as long as it did not hamper government’s efforts to protect national security and to discover the identities of people who leak classified information.

Lucy A. Dalglish — executive director of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, based in Arlington, Va. — said she is hoping the Senate Judiciary Committee will vote on the bill in the next few weeks — before attention turns to confirmation hearings for President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

Dalglish said the Reporters Committee has been pushing for a federal shield law for six years now, and the legislation received its “first receptive hearing up on Capitol Hill when Jim [Taricani] was tangling with the judge.” (The judge was former Chief U.S. District Judge Ernest C. Torres, who has since retired.)

Dalglish said the shield law bill came “so darn close” to passing last year. But then Republicans and Democrats began clashing over an energy bill, and “when we came back in the fall, the economy imploded,” she said.

Now, she is hopeful the bill will become law by the end of 2009. “We are very, very close,” Dalglish said. “We know we have the votes.”

The Obama administration has been much more supportive than that of former President George W. Bush, she said, noting both Mr. Obama and Sen. John McCain expressed support for a federal shield law during the 2008 presidential campaign.

The House and Senate bills differ in who and what they protect. For example, the House bill only offers protection to people who report and write “for a substantial portion of the person’s livelihood or for substantial financial gain” — which would eliminate many bloggers and freelancers.

The Senate bill, by contrast, would offer protection to anyone who is “engaged in journalism” — a definition that would likely encompass non-traditional journalists, according to an article on the Reporters Committee Web site.

Dalglish noted that just about anyone with a computer can be a blogger, and she said, “We can’t provide a privilege for 75 percent of the population.” But the Senate bill would provide a privilege for “bloggers committing journalism,” she said. “And it defines the functions that a journalist performs.”

While the Senate bill would offer protection to more people, the House bill would provide stronger protection, covering not just confidential information but the entire contents of a reporter’s notebook, according to the Reporters Committee article. The House bill contains exceptions for breaches of national security, potential imminent death or bodily harm and the release of trade secrets. The Senate bill contains exceptions for national security, criminal and tortuous conduct, and the prevention of death, kidnapping and substantial bodily harm.

So under either bill, reporters would be unable to keep sources confidential in all circumstances. Still, Taricani said that qualified privilege is crucial given the obstacles faced by journalists.

“As reporters, we don’t have a lot of tools to work with,” he said. “We don’t have subpoena power. We don’t have the power of the badge or any other legal tool to compel the government to release information that is important to the public. On a daily basis, local, state and federal governments put up as many roadblocks as they possibly can, often times trying to prevent the public from knowing what the government is doing.”

The Reporters Committees noted that every state except Wyoming has some sort of protection for reporters who get subpoenaed in state court. Rhode Island has the Newsman’s Privilege Act, which provides a qualified privilege for reporters to keep sources confidential. But such protection does not extend to federal court, and the state-level protection varies across the country.

Taricani, who was prosecuted in federal court, pointed out that 42 attorneys general backed the Free Flow of Information Act last year.

And I’ll point out that Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch — who just completed his term as president of the National Association of Attorneys General and who aspires to be governor — was one of the few attorneys general who failed to support that legislation last year. At the time, Dalglish said Lynch’s position was ironic given that “the whole push in the federal system” began with the Taricani case.

At the time, spokesman Michael J. Healey said Lynch did not sign a letter supporting a shield law in part because it dealt with federal legislation.

“Our position has nothing to do with First Amendment issues,” Healey said. “It’s simply about the propriety of a state that relies on the grand jury as much as we do telling the federal government how they should conduct grand juries. Our rationale is more based on jurisdictional issues than on philosophical issues. To be clear, we absolutely respect the work of journalists and how vital they are to our society.”

When asked about the federal shield law legislation again on Thursday, Healey said, “Obviously, we have expressed a lot of concern about this in the past. Some of our concerns still remain, but Attorney General Lynch wants to take another look at this, and he is open-minded about it.”

As he concluded his comments Thursday, Taricani said, “The Founding Fathers carved out a very special place for freedom of the press. They wanted the press to watch over government.” Now, he said, “We have judges in the courts making these rulings about our use of confidential sources,” and “it flies in the face of what the Founding Fathers wanted the press to do in this country.”

efitzpat@projo.com