This is an important victory for the First...

This is an important victory for the First Amendment, and for the freedom of the press in the United States. Some people don’t seem to understand the connection between the ability of journalists to protect their confidential sources and a free press. But if whistleblowers in government, in corporations, and elsewhere in society can be hounded and persecuted, and if the Justice Department is able to use its power to turn reporters into informants, then investigative journalism in America will surely wither and die. The First Amendment will have lost its meaning.

Email from the New York Times’ James Risen to Salon’s Glenn Greenwald.

On Friday, a judge ruled that Risen would not have to testify about the identity of a source during the trial of Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA official.

Sterling was arrested in January and is accused of leaking classified information to Risen.

Glenn Greenwald, Salon. Obama’s whistleblower war suffers two defeats.