Journalists off the BALCO Case Hook

The BALCO case revolves around baseball players and steroid use. Two people faced jailed time over it. Oddly, neither used steroids nor played baseball. They didn’t supply the substances to ballplayers, and they were guilty only of doing their jobs. Thanks to a plea deal from another party, San Francisco Chronicle reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada will not be going to jail for contempt of court. Heck, they should be given medals.

The reporters faced jail time because they refused to name the source of their information on grand jury testimony. Their source turns out to be one of the defense lawyers, Troy Ellerman, who had represented Victor Conte, founder of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative a/k/a BALCO. Mr. Conte has since served a jail sentence in the matter. Mr. Ellerman let the reporters into his law offices and allowed them to copy verbatim transcripts of the testimony. Even as the information he gave them turned up in the press, he complained, “If they are denied a fair trial, which is due process, it is partly responsible to all these innuendoes, all these rumors, all this prejudging of the evidence before it's ever presented.” In Yiddish, the term is "chutzpah."

Mr. Ellerman even annoyed his own client, Mr. Conte, who said earlier this week, “I find the fact that Troy Ellerman has admitted to leaking the BALCO grand jury transcripts to be outrageous. This man was an officer of the court who was highly paid to provide the services of a criminal defense attorney. Instead, he chose to serve his own agenda and act in a way that was tremendously damaging to his own clients.”

Yet no one went after Mr. Ellerman or the others with access to the transcripts. Instead, the Justice Department went after the reporters, who incidentally were praised by President Bush in December 2004 for their work. “Tell us what we want to know, or you go to jail,” is hardly the basis of a free press. It is mind-boggling that the “investigators” decided to go after the reporters rather than investigate the few people who had access to the transcripts.

Yesterday, the San Francisco Chronicle wrote in an editorial, “A society in which government can seize a news organization’s phone records -- or jail reporters for concealing sources of information -- has lost an essential check against malfeasance or abuse of power.” It added in the same piece, “Our relief at the apparent resolution of our reporters' case does not, in any way, diminish our determination for a federal shield law. A majority of states, including California, have laws that recognize the need for reporters to protect their sources. Even though two of its primary proponents have been Indiana Republicans, Sen. Richard Lugar and Rep. Mike Pence, shield-law legislation went nowhere in the recent Republican-ruled Congress. A shield law deserves a priority spot on the next 100-hours agenda of the Democrat-led 110th Congress.” Amen.

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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