By Wright Thompson
ABC News
Sept. 22, 2006
Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams stood in front of the federal courthouse. Moments before, the two San Francisco Chronicle reporters had listened to a judge decide that they'd face jail time as a way of coercing their testimony.
They faced a wall of cameras and talked about the First Amendment and the importance of the press. [...]
A man stood near the back, anonymous. No one noticed that Michael
Rains, Barry Bonds' attorney, had come to see rock bottom for the two
men most responsible for exposing his client's alleged steroid use.
Rains had tried to listen for the verdict on the radio and, like a lot
of people in town, had been curious if the reporters would be ordered
to do time. To him, there is no difference between them and Greg
Anderson, Bonds' trainer, who is currently being jailed for his refusal
to testify in front of a grand jury.
"Contempt is contempt," Rains said. "There shouldn't be preferential
treatment because they claim to have a higher calling in life."
That's the question posed often by non-journalist friends of mine: Why
should these two men have more protection than Anderson? What is the
difference?
There is one. There is a difference between a steroids dealer who is
covering for his friend and two hard-working journalists. Look,
Anderson might be a very nice man. He certainly is a loyal friend. But
he's hardly an innocent bystander in all of this. He did time for
dealing harmful performance-enhancing drugs.
Mark and Lance? Their biggest mistake, it seems, was doing too good a
job of exposing steroid use. Sure, their work got them a book deal and
accolades. But it also got them 18 months. I've won journalism awards.
They ain't worth 18 months.
