Freedom of the Press

Since some of you aren’t sports junkies like Mr. Graber and myself, I thought I’d enlighten you to a story involving sports, drugs, and the Constitution.

Recently, Barry Bonds, who is #2 on the all-time home run list behind Henry Aaron (not counting silly Japanse players, cause this is America, land of sports greatness). Barry Bonds was a great player but not a great home run hitter, until about age 37. Then, at the age where most athletes start a serious decline in ability, he added about 20 pounds of muscle, inches to his head circumference, and starting hitting more home runs than anyone else in the history of the game.

Naturally, he attributed this un-natural power surge to lifting weights. Certainly. But then BALCO, a California-based pharmacutical company, was busted for selling designer, untraceable steriods. And lookie here, the owner fingered Mr. Bonds himself as a partaker in the medicinal magic.

Well, of course the federal government’s involved, and there’s a grand jury, and Bonds testifies, and he says he thought it was flaxseed oil and not steriods and blah blah blah. A secret grand jury, mind you, that was suspoed to be sealed.

Except two reporters for a local paper received some leaked testimony about what was said during that grand jury testimony. The used that information in a book they were writing which was an expose on Barry Bonds, which stated he used steriods and was a general a**hole. Not an article for their paper, but a book with profits and all.

Now there’s a big hubbub because these reporters have been jailed for not giving up the source of the leak of the grand jury testimony. The press is up in arms because how in the world can you make money reporting the “news” if you can’t have people breaking the law to give you the scoop. The government is prosecuting to the fullest extent of the law because how can you cover up the bad things you do if people have full rein to tell the press the bad things you do.

You can read about the story here.

Do you think the press should have the right to shield their sources?

My $.02 Weed