It went like this: Ever since a brash printer named John Peter Zenger published opinions by unnamed critics in his New York Weekly Journal against New York Gov. William Cosby, the government has been pretty cranky about journalists' efforts to protect confidentially sourced information that reflects poorly on powerful leaders. The theme played out dramatically this year in Washington, beginning with New York Times reporter Judith Miller going to jail to keep her sources private and ending with last week's perjury and obstruction of justice charges against Lewis Libby for allegedly leaking a CIA agent's identity to Miller and a Time magazine reporter.
In Zenger's case, anonymous authors called Cosby an "idiot," a "Nero" and a "rogue." Zenger refused to reveal their identities. This was in 1735.
Colonial authorities arrested Zenger and charged him with seditious libel. A jury ultimately acquitted him. And a healthy adversarial relationship between press and government was born.
It wasn't the First Amendment lesson that drew me out of my toasty home on a cold and rainy weekend morning to a meeting sponsored by the Society for Professional Journalists (SPJ). I'd had all the New York v. Zenger I could take during my illustrious college journalism education 25 years earlier.
No, what I wanted to see was Shurtleff, our Republican attorney general, in another demonstration of unpredictable but admirable behavior. Never one to cave to his party's pedantic right-wingers, Shurtleff regularly keeps them - and sometimes the rest of us - guessing. He shared the stage this day with a First Amendment lawyer and three Salt Lake City journalists, discussing the drive to strengthen Utah's open records laws and press freedom in the 2006 Legislature.
Shurtleff is out front in the push for a shield law for Utah's news reporters, which would allow them to keep their notes and confidential sources from the scrutiny of criminal prosecutors. On Wednesday night, Shurtleff and SPJ representatives were to present their proposal to an advisory committee of judges and lawyers at the state Supreme Court. The court could adopt this protection for reporters in its rules of evidence, without waiting for the Legislature to move first.
A second approach would be for Shurtleff et al to pitch the shield law to legislators.
It's often a head-scratcher to guess where Shurtleff will land on tough issues. He loves history and the law. He has rankled the GOP's ultra-conservative faction by supporting hate-crimes legislation and by opposing the constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. But then he'll do something straight down the party line - fight the University of Utah's ban on concealed weapons or urge removal of Seagrams Coolers from supermarket shelves because they might lead teenage girls to lives of wanton drunkenness.
This shield law business won't win him many friends among prosecutors, but the AG says it's the right thing to do. Utah isn't exactly scandal central.
Nor is it scrubby clean of government high jinks (can you say Nancy Workman?) Occasionally, an anonymous whistle-blower is just what we need to prove how secrecy and unchecked power breeds corruption.
Protection for those confidential informants (police and prosecutors use them all the time. They call them "snitches.") would help keep that information flowing.
It's important to people like me, because we want to get that information to you. Shurtleff, however unpredictably, understands that.
hmullen@sltrib.com
