Reporter Facing Bankruptcy Over Protecting Sources

An ex-reporter is facing bankruptcy over her refusal to name sources in an anthrax case involving former Attorney General John Ashcroft. The judge in the case has put her on an escalating scale of fines.

Upping the ante in the fight between the press and the courts over confidential sources, a judge here has imposed daily fines on a former reporter for USA Today that could quickly bankrupt her unless she reveals all of her sources at the Justice Department and the FBI.

Toni Locy, who now teaches journalism at West Virginia University, faces a $500 daily fine beginning at midnight. Next week, the fines will go up to $1,000 per day, then to $5,000 a day the week after.

"I don't have that kind of money," she said Monday.

The judge has prohibited her friends, family and former employers from helping her pay the fines.

But lawyers for Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, the biowarfare expert who came under investigation after the mysterious wave of anthrax attacks in 2001, said Locy can spare herself by telling the full truth.

"We hope it [the judge's order] hastens the day when the media returns to exposing, rather than covering up, wrongdoing on the anthrax investigation," said Patrick P. O'Donnell, whose Washington law firm represents Hatfill in his lawsuit against the Justice Department.

In recent years, judges have taken an increasingly hard line against reporters who refuse to cooperate with prosecutors or plaintiffs who are pursuing a civil suit against the government.

In this case, Hatfill sued the Justice Department for leaking information that damaged his reputation. In August 2002, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft called Hatfill a "person of interest" in the unsolved anthrax case, which sent reporters and camera crews in pursuit of the former government scientist.