Government has an obligation not to inhibit the collection and dissemination of news…. I'm convinced that if reporters should ever lose the right to protect the confidentiality of their sources then serious investigative reporting will simply dry up. The kind of resourceful, probing journalism that first exposed most of the serious scandals, corruption and injustice in our nation's history would simply disappear…. And let me tell you, reading about one's failings in the daily papers is one of the privileges of high office in this free country of ours.
Nelson A. Rockefeller, governor of New York, speech to the Anti-Defamation League, Syracuse, New York, November 29, 1972, as reported by The New York Times, November 30, 1972, p. 1, 86.
