Chronicle reporter faces BALCO prosecutor
SPJ earlier this year signed onto support Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada, the two San Francisco Chronicle reporters who reported on grand jury testimony from case involving a San Francisco laboratory called BALCO.
The two reporters were threatened with jail if they did not cough up the name or names of who provided them the secret testimony from the grand jury proceedings. It was just the latest effort by a federal prosecutor to force testimony and secret sources from journalists. It provided new momentum for the Sheild law effort. A lawyer on the case admitted he was the source and Williams and Fainura-Wada were off the hook.
Williams and Debra Wong Yang, the prosecutor who pursued the information, met at an American Bar Association panel. The Chronicle has the story.