Have any of you ever taken any kind of press/journalism class? Seriously.

Anonymouse sources serve many purposes. If we had this same law when Nixon was in power, Watergate would've ended up being nothing.

Christ, am I the only American here who gets how bad releasing sources can be?

I don't know about that. Even if Berstein and Woodward had to cough up that now dead person, Watergate would still hold a lot of weight. That was a pretty big scandal to cover up.

Not really--the only way that it even had the clout to get published was Deep Throat. If they had to release that source, the govt. would've taken him away "mysteriously", and the story would've been nothing.

But that's AFTER The story is released. I don't think CREEP would double-tap Deep Throat after their nefarious plans have been released to the public.

What were the cases in which the reporters were forced to turn over their sources? A case doesn't have to be terrorist-related at all for the source to be an important part of an investigation - say that a reporter has connections to someone who has vital information pertaining to an investigation.

I understand and agree that anonymous sources can definitely help expose corruption and blow the cover off of conspiracies, but there may be times where an anonymous source needs to be contacted, and the referenced instances may have been those times.

In those cases the onus is on the anonymous source to allow him/herself to be contacted, not for the government to infringe on his/her rights.

They could chicken out and people could die due to some nasty plot of some descriptions, but that is the price of freedom. You have to be willing to accept that if you want freedom then the government won't always be able to help you.

You have to trust that people will be willing to put themselves in harms way to help other people, even if precedent has shown that it's not the case.