Smoking Out the Whistle-Blowers

Having wasted millions of dollars trying to repeal California’s tough new anti-smoking law, Philip Morris is now cruising for another public-relations black eye. The tobacco company is suing the ABC television network over news reports, based partly on anonymous sources in the tobacco industry, that cigarette makers artificially raised the nicotine level in their products to keep smokers hooked.

The libel suit itself is not surprising, nor is the plaintiff’s attempt to get ABC reporters to disclose their sources, but there is a troubling wrinkle. Philip Morris has sent subpoenas to hotels, car rental companies, phone companies and credit card issuers in an attempt to trace the movements of journalists as they gathered information for the story.

This attempt to make an end-run around press shield laws is properly being resisted by ABC, with the support of several other major news organizations in friend-of-the-court briefs in Virginia. They argue that, in this computer-driven Information Age, exposing such records would seriously undermine the ability of reporters to guarantee confidentiality to key sources. Certainly the reporter’s privilege means very little if it applies only to what goes into his or her notebook.

In part, this situation grows out of excessive use of anonymous sources. Too many news organizations allow aggrieved persons to shoot at enemies from a newsroom duck blind. In very rare cases, reporters even have fabricated stories, using unnamed “sources.” But that is not the issue here. If Philip Morris has a valid claim of libel, it should be able to prove that based on the content of the news programs, not hotel phone records. Let a jury decide whether it was libelous to say that the tobacco companies manipulated nicotine content and then lied to the federal government about it.

We suspect that part of the Philip Morris offensive is not to win a libel judgment but to intimidate its own employees who would be whistle-blowers. Despite certain abuses, press access to inside sources has proved to be a powerful tool to keep government and business honest, the Watergate scandal that brought down Richard Nixon being only the most obvious.

There are certain facts that cannot be obtained without offering sources ironclad promises of anonymity. The press should not permit sources to make gratuitously pejorative statements from under cover, but the public good requires access to knowledgeable sources without fear of legal action.

The Philip Morris suit serves only to detract attention from the real issue: that the tobacco companies are marketing and promoting a dangerous product, and that they knew they were doing so long before the public did.