The assessor and confidential sources
Wednesday night's posting on sbsun.com and dailybulletin.com, and the followup story in the this morning's newspapers, on county Assessor Bill Postmus' reported trips to rehabilitation raises questions about the use of confidential sources. Our approach mirrors standard industry practice - use them only when you've exhausted all other means to tell the story and require independent corroboration from multiple sources.
In the case of Postmus, we'd been pursuing reports of rehab stays for nearly two years, to the point where we'd sued to get access to his calendar from around the time of a major 2006 wildfire. Multiple sources verified that the former chairman of the Board of Supervisor had twice entered rehab, and when he announced this week he was taking a 10-week medical leave for an undisclosed illness, it came time to put the pieces together.
At the center of all of this is the public's right to know. The use of confidential sources has long been a staple of investigative reporting, and reporters have gone to jail to shield the identities of those who otherwise would not come forward. The most celebrated recent example of this - the Balco steroid case - has helped build the case for the "Free Flow of Information Act," which is working its way through the U.S. Senate.
The bill, which has strong bipartisan support and the backing of both presumptive presidential candidates, establishes "qualified privilege" the use of confidential sources and thoughtful ground rules for when reporters can be forced to testify. A companion measure was overwhelmingly approved by the House.
As we've long argued, this kind of protection is less for our benefit than for the communities we serve and who rely on a free and open press to stay informed.