AMERICAN PRESS INSTITUTE– It can be something of a jolt to the democratic sensibilities of most Americans when they learn that a journalist has been arrested for treason, held for months without public charges, denied bail not by a court but by the government accuser, and is destined to be tried in secret.

And even though that injustice unfolds in China, quite distant from us geographically and constitutionally, there are elements of such government action that offer unsettling reminders that from time to time we threaten our journalists with jail, too.

Zhao Yan was charged by Chinese authorities with the capital crime of leaking state secrets after his employer, The New York Times, published an article about the impending resignation of a top government official. Zhao and the Times both assert that Zhao had nothing to do with the article; nevertheless he faces a harsh prison sentence.

Zhao is not alone. The Times reports that 30 other journalists are in jail in China right now on similar charges.

Such a thing couldn’t happen in the United States, at least not in that way.

We have the First Amendment to protect journalists. We have independent courts to safeguard the rights of all Americans. It is not in our nature to charge journalists with treason when they disclose sensitive government information.

We are much more circumspect when we threaten journalists who irritate government officials or confound government procedures. We try to follow the law and we respect the Constitution.

But we still find ways to send journalists to jail.

For example, one way around current law and the First Amendment is to go after journalists’ confidential sources – and then send the journalists to jail if they refuse to disclose those sources to a grand jury investigating a possible crime.

That is why Judith Miller, also a Times employee, has been incarcerated nearly three months in a federal prison, the longest term ever served by a newspaper reporter in the United States. Miller is not in prison for revealing “state secrets”; she did not even write an article. Instead, she was held in contempt of court for refusing to tell a grand jury who in the government she talked to, or, more probably, who talked to her.

Read more about Sending Journalists to Jail.

© AMERICAN PRESS INSTITUTE 2005