Some recent high-profile cases in which journalists were subpoenaed in federal court to disclose confidential or nonconfidential material. Under Senate legislation, journalists would generally get more protection from revealing confidential information.

_Former USA Today reporter Toni Locy was found in contempt by a judge in Washington in February after she refused to identify confidential Justice Department sources for stories involving Steven J. Hatfill, a former Army scientist under suspicion in the 2001 anthrax attacks. Locy was ordered to pay daily fines escalating from $500 the first week to $5,000 by the third week. The fines are being delayed pending appeals. The judge also is considering whether to find former CBS reporter James Stewart in contempt.

_New York Times reporter James Risen was subpoenaed in January by a grand jury in Alexandria, Va., apparently to divulge confidential sources who provided information for his 2006 book, “State of War.” The book’s allegations, not published in the newspaper, describe an unsuccessful CIA effort to infiltrate Iran’s nuclear program. Risen is fighting the subpoena.

_Freelance video blogger Joshua Wolf was imprisoned for 226 days in 2006 and 2007. He had refused to turn over video from a 2005 protest that coincided with the G-8 economic summit after a San Francisco police car was vandalized. Wolf sold some footage to television stations and posted it on his Web site, but refused to turn over unpublished material. Wolf was released after he provided the uncut video in exchange for not having to testify before a grand jury.

_San Francisco Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams faced prison sentences of up to 18 months. They had written stories about the secret grand jury testimony of baseball stars Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi regarding possible steroid use. After a lawyer admitted in 2007 that he had allowed Fainaru-Wada to take detailed notes from grand jury transcripts, prosecutors withdrew the subpoenas and a judge cleared findings of contempt.

_A prosecutor subpoenaed the telephone records of New York Times reporters Judith Miller and Philip Shenon while investigating a government leak about a planned FBI raid on the Global Relief Foundation, an Islamic charity suspected of funding terrorism. The Justice Department said the reporters’ calls for comment tipped off the charities of upcoming government raids, and authorities wanted to know the reporters’ sources. A federal appeals court in New York ruled that the records had to be turned over. The Supreme Court in 2006 refused to intervene.

_The Times’ Miller and Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper were found in contempt after refusing to reveal confidential sources to a special prosecutor trying to find out who in the Bush administration leaked the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame. Miller spent 85 days in jail in 2005 and was freed after her source released her from a promise of confidentiality. Cooper did not serve time after he obtained a similar waiver from his source.

_In Rhode Island, WJAR-TV reporter Jim Taricani served four months of home confinement in 2004 and 2005. He had refused to identify the source who gave him a copy of a videotape showing a former Providence City Hall official taking a bribe from an undercover FBI informant. The videotape was leaked to Taricani in violation of a judge’s protective order. The special prosecutor learned the identity of the source on his own, but Taricani still received a sentence.

_Associated Press reporter H. Josef Hebert and four other journalists were each fined $500 a day in 2004 for refusing to identify their sources for stories on Wen Ho Lee, the nuclear scientist whose career was cut short when his name surfaced in an espionage investigation. Lee sued the government for leaking his name to the news media and his attorneys subpoenaed the journalists. The fines were dismissed after news organizations, including the AP, agreed to pay Lee $750,000 as part of a $1.6 million settlement of his privacy lawsuit.

_The Chicago Sun-Times’ Abdon Pallasch and Robert Herguth and the Chicago Tribune’s Flynn McRoberts refused to turn over taped interviews for a biography they were writing about a known FBI informant. Lawyers for accused terrorist leader Michael McKevitt subpoenaed the tapes to use in cross-examining the informant during McKevitt’s trial in Ireland. The journalists refused, saying it could hurt sales of their planned book. Disagreeing, Appeals Court Judge Richard Posner wrote in 2003 that judges had misunderstood or “ignored” a key Supreme Court ruling that he said found no First Amendment privilege. Pallasch and Herguth surrendered the interview tapes.

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Source: Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, AP research.