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If the word gets out, if the perception exists that by speaking to a CBS journalist you are, therefore, inevitably, immediately speaking to the police, I don't think there's any doubt but that people won't talk. And, therefore, the public won't learn.
Floyd Abrams -
The question at the end of the day was, the courts having found there was no defense, a producer about to go to jail, should CBS in effect tell the producer go to jail even though there is no law at all that we can use to get you out of jail?
Floyd Abrams
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I think that the very fact that CBS fought and fought and fought in Texas, in New York.
Floyd Abrams -
Were this not Texas, were there not a state where there were no protections at all and where the law was clear on that, I think CBS and Mary Mapes and Dan Rather and all of us had a very good chance of winning. So this is an ongoing battle about an issue of principle.
Floyd Abrams -
I know a lot of reporters certainly will go to jail to defend confidential sources. Some have even gone to jail for an issue like this. But I can't say that's the norm.
Floyd Abrams -
I would say that the Pentagon Papers case of 1971 - in which the government tried to block the The New York Times and The Washington Post that they obtained from a secret study of how we got involved in the war in Vietnam - that is probably the most important case.
Floyd Abrams -
No other country in the world gives protection like that, but it is not absolute protection. People sometimes meet that high burden and win libel suits, and in those cases I think they ought to win.
Floyd Abrams