The odds are growing favorably that Congress finally will approve a national shield law when it reconvenes after summer recess. Laws to protect reporters from being forced to reveal anonymous sources are in effect in most states, but they are increasingly needed on the federal level.

Over many years, media groups have been unsuccessful in their efforts to gain protection under a shield law. Now, like many other events during historic battles between the media and government, this turn in circumstances comes not because of strong public demand but because of a court ruling which in this case has sent a reporter to jail.

It is difficult to understand why Judith Miller of The New York Times sits in jail for refusing to reveal the source for a story she never wrote.

The prosecutor, meanwhile, has not divulged why he needs the information.

The politics which have drawn attention to the case clearly are visible. Democrats hope to entrap Karl Rove, the president's top assistant, as the source of an illegal leak of the identity of a CIA secret agent. A case that might have become lost in journalistic journals has gained front page positioning because of politics.

There are a growing number of court threats against reporters who refuse to reveal news sources, but none has attracted the national attention given to Rove and the CIA agent case where columnist Robert Novak printed a column revealing the agent's name but has not been charged thus far with criminal action.

Thus, we have a case where Miller is imprisoned for refusing to divulge her source or sources for a story she never wrote, but Novak is free despite the revelation in his column. That almost sounds like secret police action.

Regardless of what happens in the case of the CIA agent, Valerie Plame Wilson, the approval of a federal media shield law would be a big step toward protecting the public's right to know.

The news media have not done a good job of convincing the public of the importance of full access to governmental information which does not include important security information. In part, this comes because of decreased credibility for both the media and the government.

In years past, newspapers were less accurate in their reporting than today, and they corrected fewer errors. Today newspapers such as The New York Times and The Washington Post have admitted publicly that they have run false stories by errant reporters. The admission of guilt should be a plus, but actually it has damaged credibility.

The Free Flow of Information Act proposed by Sen. Dick Lugar and Rep. Mike Pence (Indiana Republicans) differs from some of its shield law predecessors in that it does not guarantee absolute protection. This has led to endorsement by the American Bar Association as well as all major journalistic groups.

The act would allow the federal government to compel disclosure of confidential sources only if:

• The general conditions for disclosure are met if all non-media sources have been exhausted and testimony sought is essential to the case or investigation; and
• Disclosure of the identity of a source is necessary to prevent imminent and actual harm to the national security.

In the past year, more than two dozen reporters have been threatened by courts seeking information obtained from confidential sources. Nine of those reporters have been sentenced or threatened by a court seeking to force them to reveal their confidential news sources.

Eighteen states have had their courts give reporters protection, and 31 states and the District of Columbia have "shield" laws.

Freedom of speech is a basic tenet of American democracy, but questions of freedom of information protection when reporters need to use anonymous sources and the whole subject of off-the-record comments long have been controversial. It must be difficult to explain in Iraq why we jail a reporter for a story she never wrote, but we look at freedom of the press as a key element in creating a democracy.

The Freedom of Information Act went into the books during President Johnson's regime, but it had little effect until this writer created the White House Office of the Director of Communications. Through this office we were able to break many "security" logjams, but we did not solve the problem.

Until that time, government departments routinely over-classified material, often to hide embarrassing information. That still is a bureaucratic temptation.

In the years since the 1970s, however, access to government information has increased vastly, frequently through court action at the request of reporters and media companies. More information is available to the public but not on a free-flowing basis.

If Congress fails to adopt a federal shield law this year when attention is brought to the problem through both a political controversy and through the mysterious jailing of a prized reporter, no change in the law can be expected for more years to come.

Herbert G. Klein is a national fellow at AEI.