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(Copyrighted 2002 VNU Business Media, Inc. Used with permission.)

Reporters in the dock

Compelling a former reporter's testimony at the U.N. war-crimes tribunal endangers all journalists in the world's danger zones.

As if journalists who cover the world's bad neighborhoods did not have enough problems already, now the United Nations' war-crimes tribunal would like to haul them into court to testify for the prosecution in The Hague, Netherlands.

This spectacularly wrong-headed legal strategy came to public light at a May 10 hearing of the three-judge tribunal when lawyers for The Washington Post challenged a secret subpoena the U.N. prosecutors issued to retired reporter Jonathan C. Randal. Prosecutors have been trying to use a 1993 article Randal wrote for the Post as evidence in their case against two Bosnian Serbs accused of genocide and 11 other war crimes for allegedly expelling 100,000 non-serbs from the city of Banja Luka during the 1992-95 conflict in Bosnia.

In Randal's article, one of the defendants, former Serbian housing official Radoslav Brdjanin, is quoted as advocating the expulsion of non-Serbs from the city. When Brdjanin's lawyers said they would not accept the article as evidence unless they could cross-examine Randal, the U.N. prosecutors happily agreed. They probably figured Randal would come to court eagerly because, according to reporting by Marlise Simons and Felicity Barringer of The New York Times, European journalists and documentary filmmakers have not only stepped forward voluntarily to testify at past war-crimes trials — they also have "often provided off-the-record information that investigators have used as leads."

Well, shame on them. But even if a few Continental journalists irresponsibly blur the line between reporter and cop, the U.N. court must honor the distinction. Local journalists and foreign correspondents in conflict zones already face numerous dangerous. If the world's many misbehaving tyrants start seeing reporters as potential witnesses in future war-crimes tribunals, they will doubtless begin to treat journalists with the same cruelty they now reserve for their enemies and subjects. This issue becomes all the more urgent with the United Nations about to open for business its brand-new International Criminal Court.

In the past, war-crimes tribunals have exempted certain occupations and public-service group members, such as lawyers and Red Cross workers, from testifying about what they have seen in conflict zones. As the world's eyes and ears in these nasty situations, journalists deserve the same exemption.

If the U.N. court insists on subpoenaing journalists, it should follow the same standards that apply in American courts: A journalist cannot be compelled to give evidence unless it is absolutely vital and cannot be obtained by other means.

The case U.N. prosecutors want to drag Randal into certainly appears to fail that test. If the case against the two Bosnian Serbs — for genocide, no less — truly stands or falls on testimony about a newspaper article quoting the hateful musings of a housing official, then it amounts to a legal house of cards that must not be allowed, before it collapses, to set a terrible precedent for the world's press.