Dilemma of a Reporter-Turned-Teacher

John Rezendes-Herrick is a man wedged between two lives, caught between the guiding ethics of two disparate professions: his former career as a journalist and his present job teaching social studies to seventh-graders.

Last week, a judge ordered the 47-year-old San Bernardino man to spend five days in jail for failing to divulge a confidential source in a series of stories he wrote two years ago. If the order--currently stayed pending appeal--is carried out, Rezendes-Herrick will be the first California journalist in a quarter of a century to be locked up for refusing to reveal a source.

While Rezendes-Herrick is ready to stick to his guns, to uphold an oath of silence he calls “central to the journalist’s code,” his once-ironclad stand is wearing down as time passes and he develops a new and equally strong sense of duty.

For one thing, he isn’t a journalist anymore. He’s now a teacher with a new code of ethics--to never abandon his students, no matter what. And so when the day comes for the 18-year journalism veteran and father of three to surrender his freedom, he’s not entirely sure what decision he’ll make.

“I’ve got a new profession now, with a new code,” he said one afternoon last week, sitting in an empty classroom at Golden Valley Middle School. “I’m charged with educating these kids. And if I go to jail, if I abandon them, even for five days--they will have missed something.”

Golden Valley Principal Jim Kissinger admits he’s of two minds about his teacher’s dilemma. “Frankly, I’d prefer he’d stay out of jail,” he said. “But one of the things we teach here is the Constitution, which says he has a right to do this kind of thing. Why would I want to fire him for it?”

Media advocates say the Rezendes-Herrick case is part of a worrisome trend in California and across the nation. Local prosecutors, they say, are trying to put dents in reporters’ protections such as the California shield law, which was approved by voters as a ballot measure in 1980.

Terry Francke, attorney for the California First Amendment Coalition, said that only a criminal defendant’s right to a fair trial supersedes a reporter’s protections under the shield law. But prosecutors, he says, are seeking more leverage.

The result, he said, would be chilling for reporters, who would be continually called into court to tell all they know and even--like Rezendes-Herrick--reveal confidential sources.

“They’re trying to turn reporters into government investigators,” said Jane Kirtley, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press. “And that is a very, very dangerous precedent.”

A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision allows sources to sue reporters for breach of contract if they divulge the names of sources whom they have promised anonymity, said Kelli Sager, a media attorney for Davis, Wright and Tremaine.

“It’s a terrible position for a reporter to be in, to have to make that sort of Hobson’s choice,” between facing the wrath of prosecutors and a lawsuit from a source, she said.

Rezendes-Herrick’s fate may hinge on whether the state Supreme Court decides to review a case in which prosecutors demanded video outtakes of a jailhouse interview with a murder suspect, Rezendes-Herrick’s attorney, James J. Manning Jr., said. If the appellate decision that granted prosecutors access to the outtakes stands, the shield law will be worthless, he contended.

Since 1990, only nine journalists nationwide have gone to jail to protect their sources, including one Texas reporter who was detained for several hours in a judge’s chambers until he revealed his source on a story.

The last California journalist jailed was Los Angeles Herald Examiner reporter William Farr, who spent 46 days behind bars in 1972 rather than reveal his source for a story connected to the Charles Manson trial.

‘Ticked Off,’ Teacher Says

Rezendes-Herrick says he was shocked when his old life unexpectedly came knocking to threaten his new one. “I’m ticked off,” he said. “I thought that career was over.”

In 1995, Rezendes-Herrick was a reporter covering county issues for the 67,000-circulation Inland Valley Daily Bulletin when he began writing stories on a controversial landfill project.

The massive Rail-Cycle proposal, backed by Waste Management Inc., the nation’s largest waste-removal firm, and the Santa Fe Railroad, called for 21 tons of Los Angeles-area trash to be hauled to the Mojave Desert each day.

The project was opposed by Cadiz Land Co., an agribusiness operation that grows, harvests and packages agricultural products. Operating on property located within five miles of the proposed landfill, the company feared ground water pollution from the mountains of daily garbage to be dumped at the Barstow-area site.

In 1996, having moved to the paper’s business section, Rezendes-Herrick wrote a series of stories about Cadiz that he says were unrelated to its opposition to the landfill project.

“I was a local business reporter and they were a major local business,” he recalls. “I wanted to explain how a company with reported operating losses for five straight years could become a major player in California agriculture. Where was the money coming from?”

In January, Rezendes-Herrick decided to retire from the news business after an 18-year career that included jobs on mid-sized papers from Palm Springs to San Bernardino.

He says his leaving the paper was unrelated to the Cadiz stories. Rather, he walked away from a $36,000-a-year job and a career he loved in the interests of his family: He and his wife had just had a third child and he was attracted by the health and retirement benefits afforded teachers.

So he took a job teaching social studies to seventh-graders, moving from the newsroom to the classroom. The transition, he was soon to learn, would not come so easily.

Last month, a San Bernardino County grand jury handed up a 23-count indictment against Waste Management and five of its current or former employees. The company is accused of engaging in stock fraud, wiretapping and illegal use of trade secrets to drive down the price of Cadiz stock so the firm would be unable to finance opposition to the project.

Waste Management officials have denied the charges.

Joseph Lauricella, a former Rail-Cycle consultant who has been sentenced to six years in prison as part of a plea bargain, told investigators that he provided Rezendes-Herrick with a box of information on Cadiz that was used in the stories, according to Manning, the former reporter’s lawyer.

Also, at least one unidentified source told prosecutors that Rezendes-Herrick had been paid to write negative stories on Cadiz, according to legal documents filed by Manning.

Prosecutors have refused to comment either on the case or how the newspaper stories might fit into the prosecution. A judge recently sealed the court file, making their arguments unavailable to the public.

Last month, a sheriff’s deputy came knocking on the new teacher’s classroom door with a subpoena. “At first I thought that one of my kids had been arrested or that he wanted to talk to me about one of my students,” he said. “That wasn’t it.”

Rezendes-Herrick spent two days testifying before the grand jury, which repeatedly asked him about the identity of his sources for the Cadiz stories, he said. “I refused to tell them,” he said.

Instead, he sought protection under California’s shield law, designed to protect journalists from revealing confidential sources.

Has Told Students of Problem

Last week, Superior Court Judge J. Michael Welch ordered Rezendes-Herrick to spend five days in jail for failing to comply with the grand jury requests.

For now, the teacher goes about his business waiting for the shadow from a former career to show itself again. He has talked about the looming jail sentence with his students, who can’t believe a teacher could ever be locked up, and to his own children, one of whom thinks that “Dad going to jail would be cool.”

Around campus, the new teacher is suddenly something of a celebrity. Colleagues have weighed in with opinions, including one who offered to bake him the proverbial jailhouse cake--file included.

But one day, perhaps soon, Rezendes-Herrick knows he may have a decision to make--to honor the oath of a past life or do what feels right today.

He says he has never thought of calling his source--who he says was never referred to in his stories but who provided several crucial investigative tips--to ask for permission to reveal his identity to authorities.

No lives or careers are at stake. Just pure journalistic credibility.

“The D.A. has his job, journalists have theirs,” he says. “That line should not be crossed.”

Sitting in an empty classroom, his shirt-sleeves rolled up, he blinked his eyes and considered the future.

“I’m prepared to do it,” he said of his jail time. Then, pausing, he added. “I’m prepared to consider it.”