WHEREAS
U.S. District Court judge Thomas F. Hogan ordered in May journalists Matthew Cooper, from Time Magazine and Tim Russert, from NBC; in August, Walter Pincus, from The Washington Post and in October, Judith Miller, from The New York Times, to testify before a grand jury to disclose confidential sources to prosecutors investigating the leak of a CIA operative's identity, Valerie Plame, which was originally revealed by columnist Robert Novak of The New York Times in July of 2003, under the threat of holding the journalists in contempt of court as well as impose fines

WHEREAS
Federal Judge Hogan ordered in October The New York Times reporter Miller to jail for refusing to testify before the grand jury about conversations with a confidential source but suspended the order pending her appeal and whose incarceration could be up to 18 months for contempt or until she testifies. Miller never wrote about Valerie Plame, the presumed CIA operative, who is married to former U.S. diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV

WHEREAS
Judge Hogan ruled that reporters do not have an absolute First Amendment privilege not to testify about confidential sources, and that special prosecutor in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, had exhausted other sources before subpoenaing Miller

WHEREAS
Time reporter Matthew Cooper, who has been subpoenaed in the investigation, has agreed to testify in limited circumstances, forcing him to seek release from the promise of confidentiality of his sources. Cooper had been ordered to jail and fined $1,000 a day by Hogan on Aug. 9 for refusing to testify. While Cooper was free pending an appeal, he agreed to testify about conversations he had with Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, after Libby waived their confidentiality agreement. He was then subpoenaed again

WHEREAS
on October 8th, Miller and The New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller said they would not agree to provide testimony even under those circumstances

WHEREAS
Tim Russert, from NBC, was called to appear in May, and although he appealed the subpoena, when unformed that the judge had ruled against the appeal, was forced to acquiesce to questioning. Meanwhile, Walter Pincus, from The Washington Post, recently received the same court order

WHEREAS
Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, from Washington, placed the journalists H. Josef Hebert, from the Associated Press, James Risen and Jeff Perth, from The New York Times, Robert Drogin, from Los Angeles Times, and Pierre Thomas, from ABC, in “contempt of the court” and set fines of $500 for each day they refuse to reveal their sources from reports made on Wen Ho Lee, a nuclear arms scientist who was under suspicion for espionage

WHEREAS
Principle 3 of the Declaration of Chapultepec, states "The authorities must be compelled by law to make available in a timely and reasonable manner the information generated by the public sector. No journalist may be forced to reveal his or her sources of information"

THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE IAPA RESOLVES

to ask that the public’s right to know and the right to receive information and the journalists’ right to protect their sources be respected, safeguarding confidentiality of the news source

to urge the American authorities not to utilize the media as an extended arm of their law enforcement activities by compelling them to reveal their privileged information and thus, avoiding the “chilling effect” detrimental to freedom of the press as guaranteed under the First Amendment.