Ivins was committed to a facility in Frederick for treatment of his depression. On July 24, he was released from the facility, operated by Sheppard Pratt Health System. A telephone call that same day by The Times verified that Ivins' government voice mail was still functioning at the bacteriology division of USAMRIID.

In this 40-hour span with the detectives, there [were] so many details, and dialogue and action. There was a point where they were just detectives and I wasn’t in the back seat anymore. I filled twelve notebooks with stuff.

The Court is not asking anyone to "trust me because I say so." Instead, the Court is suggesting that the public should trust the system, because the procedures in place have withstood the test of time.

[M]any tort reforms make it easier for individuals with legitimate claims to sue businesses. Tort reforms are simply measures to improve the accuracy and efficiency of the civil justice system; they’re opposed by trial lawyers because they derive billions of dollars of wealth from inaccuracies and inefficiencies in the civil justice system, and supported by businesses and consumers that are the victims of such inaccuracies and inefficiencies.

Nor does he provide any reason why the Times--inexpert in national security, motivated by fame and profit, and lacking political accountability or external checks--should be trusted to strike the right balance between security and disclosure. Sometimes it makes the right call, but often it does not.

. . .

We've focused a lot on the dangers of government secrecy in the last seven years, and too little on the dangers of an unchecked and sometimes irresponsible press. Lichtblau's book has done the country a service by laying these latter dangers bare.

Sen. Stevens' legal team made three arguments on why the government's case should be thrown out.

In one motion, his lawyers said the government's case improperly intruded on the Senate's domain and violated separation-of-powers principles. In another, the lawyers said the government's indictment was unconstitutionally vague because it lacked proper details about the gifts Sen. Stevens' allegedly received and concealed.

Sen. Stevens' legal team also argued the government's case violated the Constitution's Speech and Debate Clause because Sen. Stevens was being prosecuted for legally protected legislative acts.

In other motions, Sen. Stevens' lawyers asked the government to be more specific about certain charges, and they said some of the language in the indictment was prejudicial and inflammatory.

The lawyers also suggested that Sen. Stevens may seek to suppress some of the government's electronic-surveillance evidence. According to Sen. Stevens' legal filings, the government has 450 hours of telephone intercepts.

"We explained to them, if they wanted to start down a path of removing historical archives and pulling it from the public sphere, what they're doing is censorship," said Chris Durr, the editor at the time. "We basically said, sorry, we have principles in journalism that don't allow us to put stuff in the memory hole and pretend it never happened."

After all, the students said, it's factual and a matter of record.

Of the articles analyzed, 21% reported that Schiavo "might improve" and 7% that she "might recover." Statements explicitly denying the PVS diagnosis [persistent vegetative state] were found in 6% of articles. Explanations of PVS and other chronic disorders of consciousness were rare (?1%). Most frequently cited descriptions of behaviors were that the patient responds (10%), reacts (9%), is incapacitated (6%), smiles (5%), and laughs (5%). Withdrawal of life support was described as murder in 9% of articles.

Today, of course, newspapers themselves are on life support. If coverage of the Schiavo case was this sloppy, how poor will it be when a similar event arises and when many reporters who specialize in health, medicine or science have been laid off?

Wood said he believes the news media should report the name of a suspect only if authorities will go on the record or if an arrest is imminent. Journalists should think hard before doing otherwise. They should test the information from leaks, treat it skeptically and, if the decision is to publish, be very careful about tone.

“They’re real people,” Wood said of such suspects, “and their life as they’ve known it ceases to exist. What is said about them is devastating.”

Obviously, as a reporter I’m all in favor of sources leaking sealed documents to reporters, so I’m having trouble working up much outrage over this particular transgression.

On the other hand, it is obvious that the reporters in this case were faced with a dilemma and, in some cases, the public was misled as a result. Once the reporters saw the legal caption on the papers they should have realized that the Rigsbys were not wholly disinterested Good Samaritans, but also plaintiffs who had an enormous pecuniary stake — potentially tens of millions of dollars in whistleblower recoveries (see Part V of this series) — in interpreting State Farm’s conduct in the worst conceivable light. While the reporter would want to disclose that potential source of bias to the reader, the fact that the case was sealed made it impossible to do so. (It would get the source, Scruggs, in trouble.) So reporters faced a quandary: either don’t use the source at all, or use the source without revealing the huge potential bias.