'SF Chron' Editor's Note: Our Reporters Should Not Be Jailed

By: E&P Staff In a note in Monday's San Francisco Chronicle, the paper's editor Phil Bronstein asserted the importance of the work done by reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams in exposing the steroid use among athletes in the BALCO case. He said the value of their work was the children were safer, and said that the reporters should not be put in jail for refusing to testify about their sources in the case.

"The government itself has often spoken of waging a war on drugs," wronte Bronstein in the note. "The BALCO case presumably began because the Justice Department wanted to stop steroid use. Isn't the world slightly upside down when illegal drug users are heroes, but reporters are sent to jail for work that curtails that drug use?"

This coming Thursday, a judge in San Francisco will decide whether Fainaru-Wada and Williams should go to prison for refusing to testify about their source.

To read the full editor's letters, click here.