09:36 AM EST on Thursday, December 9, 2004

The eyes of Rhode Island and the nation will be on U.S. District Court today, where Chief Judge Ernest Torres is to sentence Channel 10 newsman Jim Taricani for doing his job.

Actually, Torres is to sentence him for criminal contempt for refusing to say who gave him an FBI surveillance tape of a former city official taking a bribe. Most folks grasp that Taricani, in airing the tape, was doing a public service, even if a court order barred lawyers in the Plunder Dome corruption case from leaking materials. It turns out that Taricani's source was lawyer Joseph Bevilacqua Jr. I look to see if Torres in the end deals with Bevilacqua as harshly as with Taricani. Torres has yet to show any understanding of the work reporters do or of the public's right to know.

Taricani, a heart transplant recipient, hopes his medical condition will prompt Torres to give him home confinement instead of jail. Well, health is one in a mix of several factors for the judge to consider. Torres is right to think about the issue of fair trials and to seek guidance in U.S. Supreme Court rulings on press issues. But, ultimately, the fundamental principle that should prevail in this situation and that argues against Taricani's being punished at all is the ability of reporters to bring news to the people and at a time they -- not the courts or other officials -- deem appropriate.

A reporter's job is a calling. In 1992, the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, of which I am an alumnus, published Essential Liberty: First Amendment Battles for a Free Press. In it, Joan Konner, who was the school's dean and later was on the Providence Journal Co. board of directors, wrote, "Journalists are perpetual children in the sense that children are idealists by nature. Children want to make the world a better place. Journalists seek out the trouble spots and the centers of power because we believe that when things go wrong, getting at the facts and telling the story will cause people to step forward and make things right."

Lawyer Floyd Abrams wrote, "Do we protect the press too much? Does the First Amendment go too far? We should remember that we protect the press not because it is always right or always virtuous -- it sure isn't -- but because we so distrust government control of what we can think or say."

It's also instructive to pick up Clearing the Air, by Daniel Schorr. In 1976, Schorr, then a CBS Washington correspondent, appeared before the House ethics committee and rejected demands that he disclose details of how he procured a copy of an intelligence report prepared by a congressional panel.

Schorr recalls that he told the ethics committee, "There is a necessary tension between what you do and what I do. . . . How in God's name can we expose the secrets of government and let the people know what the government is doing if we can only expose what you say we can expose?"

A reporter's true reward is the satisfaction of collecting and disseminating news, maybe toppling a few bad guys in the process, and helping democracy function. The visual images TV reporters put on air can bring home the idea of corruption in more powerful terms than can a ton of newspaper words. At least until now, I doubt that many reporters, broadcast or print, have spent much time agonizing over the importance of protecting sources. They know; it's in their DNA.

Schorr may have said it best. He told Congress that betraying a source would be to betray himself, his career and his life. "To say that I refuse to do it isn't quite saying it right. I cannot do it."

Let Torres think about that.

M. Charles Bakst, The Journal's political columnist, can be reached by e-mail at mbakst [at] projo.com