Who woulda thunk sports reporters, sports reporters for heaven's sake, might find themselves in the jail for covering their beat?
Let's spend a minute thinking about reporters - from those who write about war and government policy to those who write about home runs.
At issue for the latter group, embodied by San Francisco Chronicle writers Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, is whether they'll be sent to prison by federal prosecutors for refusing to divulge who leaked them grand jury testimony implicating Barry Bonds and other well-known athletes in the Balco scandal in 2004.
David Aldridge: Reporters could be jailed, but Balco leak woke us up
Like many of you I enjoy sports. Jim McKay's introduction to ABC's Wide World of sports nicely summed it up:
Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sports . . . the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat . . . the human drama of athletic competition...
When the government prosecutes reporters and threatens them with jail it discourages the open dialog that democracy needs to function.
The overage adolescents who entertain us earn big money now. Sport provides valuable content for media of every description. But come on. This is sandbox stuff. It isn't rocket science. Armageddon isn't going to result if the Cubs ever win the World Series. Nostradamus didn't predict boxscores. As far as I know Revelations didn't reveal when the Toronto Maple Leafs might regain the Stanley Cup.
Fainaru-Wada and Williams in their columns and their book Game of Shadows told the story of rampant cheating involving drugs from BALCO being supplied to athletes like Barry Bonds and others.
How can the media, including the blogging community, not be chilled by the possibility of going to jail for reporting the truth? Sports reporters. Think about the city hall reporter or business reporter who gets a good lead on a story. Will they be supported by their publisher. Who's next entertainment reporters? Robert Ebert?
Let's not forget the importance of a free press.