PRESS WATCH : Wrong Targets

Few Americans, let alone foreign visitors, have written as presciently about the United States as the French writer Count Alexis de Tocqueville.

When he toured the United States in the early 1800s he was put off by the notion that the press must be free to report what it thinks important--not a surprising reaction for a patrician of noble birth. But in trying to determine where to draw the line, he realized that censorship of some kind was the only alternative and changed his mind.

In the years since, many Americans have tried not only to imagine where a line might be drawn to stifle press freedoms but actually to draw one. The latest effort will resume in Washington next Monday.

Peter Fleming, a New York lawyer, has been called in by the U.S. Senate to find out how reporters learned that Prof. Anita Hill had accused then-nominee, now Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment.

Fleming spent most of a day trying to get Timothy Phelps, a Newsday reporter, to tell under oath how he came by the story.

Now Fleming plans to subpoena Nina Totenberg, a reporter for National Public Radio, next Monday to ask the same questions, even though her lawyer has already said she will never tell.

The Senate should call this whole thing off before Fleming does something both the press and the Senate will regret--like trying to jail a reporter for doing nothing more or less than what reporters are supposed to do: report news so that people can tell their government what policies they want it to follow.