How a Crackdown on Leaks Threatens Confidential Sources

By David McCraw, The New York Times

10 September 17

t was just four years ago that roughly two dozen representatives of major news organizations crowded around a conference table at the Justice Department for a meeting with Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. Our agenda? Strengthening the Justice Department’s guidelines that limit when federal prosecutors can serve subpoenas on the news media.

The issue was not theoretical. It had just been revealed that federal investigators had secretly seized the phone records of The Associated Press and the emails of a Fox News correspondent during leak investigations. The Justice Department had convened the meetings to address what we saw as a perilous trend.

The media representatives — lawyers and executives from a range of news outlets, including CNN, Dow Jones, Hearst and the major broadcast networks — had come to make the point that when prosecutors go after journalists to find their sources, the price is ultimately paid by the public, which needs to know what its government is really up to. Mr. Holder may not have agreed with everything we had to say then and in future meetings, but the result was important: The Justice Department revised its internal guidelines to make it harder for prosecutors to obtain subpoenas for reporters’ testimony and records.

That all seems very long ago now.

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