No Malice, No Compulsion

What lawyers hear in their law offices, doctors in their consulting rooms, priests in their confessionals, they need not disclose in courts of law. Newshawks try to preserve a similar code, and sometimes go to jail for doing so, for only in four States--Maryland, New Jersey, Alabama, California--does the law specifically allow newshawks the right of concealing their news sources. Three weeks ago when Arkansas voters went to the polls they were asked to vote on a proposal to revise the State's criminal code to give newshawks immunity. The count was slow coming in for the public was not greatly interested in the referendum. Last week it was finally in. Arkansas had voted 3 to 1 that: "Before any editor, reporter or other writer for any newspaper or periodical, or publisher of any newspaper or periodical shall be required to disclose to any Grand Jury or to any authority, the source of the information used as the basis for any article he may have written or published, it must be shown that such article was written and published in bad faith, with malice, and not in the interest of the public welfare."

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