Fear of Prosecution Prompts Us Paper to Pull Stories

The editor of a leading US newspaper has admitted pulling two major investigative pieces on the advice of lawyers after a New York Times reporter was sent to jail for refusing to divulge the identity of a source.

Doug Clifton, editor of Ohio's biggest paper, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, said lawyers had advised him not to publish the articles because they were based on illegally leaked documents and could lead to penalties against the paper and the jailing of reporters.

Mr Clifton told the New York Times he would be willing to go to jail to protect a source but that but "the newspaper isn't willing to go to jail".

Mr Clifton said the paper's lawyers feared the newspaper might be prosecuted if the articles were published.

"Basically, we have come by material leaked to us that would be problematical for the person who leaked it," Mr Clifton told the New York Times. "The material was under seal or something along those lines."

Mr Clifton's comments follow the decision of Time Inc, owner of Time magazine, to hand over notes belonging to its reporter, Matthew Cooper, to a grand jury investigating the leak of an undercover CIA officer's name.

Time had been threatened with huge fines if it disobeyed a court order to hand over Cooper's notes, but was still widely criticised for doing so against its reporter's wishes.

Cooper initially refused to testify before the jury, but escaped jail when his source agreed to release him from his duty of confidentiality leaving him free to give evidence.

But New York Times reporter Judith Miller was jailed for refusing to testify in a case that has raised fears about press freedom in the US.

Miller was sent to jail in Washington last week and will serve a four-month sentence unless she agrees to reveal the identity of her source.

The case of the Plain Dealer indicates that newspapers are already changing their practices in response to the prosecution of Miller and Cooper.

The Los Angeles Times is to introduce a new policy instructing journalists to avoid entering the names of anonymous sources into a company computer for fear they could be unmasked by prosecutors.