Simons: You're the lawyers, and I'm not. Let me ask you a question in return. If the newspaper says I won't give you that information, the courts, it seems to me, would have a perfectly adequate way of punishing the newspaper for refusing to reveal their sources on an anonymous story.

Lewis: And that is?

Simons: Well can't the courts then find against the newspaper? Hasn't that been happening in libel?

Lewis: And you accept that?

Simons: I accept that.

Nesson: I'm surprised to see that Howard accepts that so blithely, because he's just been talking about owning a small newspaper--

Simons: It would wipe it out.

Nesson: --I take it that that must mean that you never publish anything in your newspaper attributed to an anonymous source.

Simons: No I'm sure that the newspaper does.

Nesson: And when somebody sues your newspaper and says you got it wrong (laughter), let's have your source. You'd be happy to admit the libel judgement and pay a huge amount of money?

Simons: No, no, no. Then what I'm saying is I have a choice. Every choice involves a sacrifice, and I'm going to have to either say, yes, you can come after me or, no, I'm not going to play. And that's the end of the ballgame for the newspaper...

Crimson: The point that we started off with is the public perception that the press has become arrogant. How can the press successfully counter that image.

Lewis: I think it is very difficult. There're some things that newspapers can do, perhaps even broadcasters--a little more conciousness of the capacity to inflict injury, a little more concern about that... I think a recognition of the kind that Howard Simons just gave us if you do that to some private individual you may have to pay, instead of always having a knee-jerk reaction...

Crimson: Professor Nesson?

Nesson: I'm a great fan of the American press. I think that, yes, there's an impression of arrogance, but I don't really think that it comes from things that I would want to see the press change doing. The place where I see that some progress in possible is in a funny little corner of this, which is in the press' relationship with the judiciary. We're talking libel cases. They're court cases. They are cases that are supervised by judges, and so the judges become a peculiarly important audience. And if the judges have the impression of the press being arrogant, that will show up in the way libel cases are administered. I don't have any doubt that the judges have gotten that impression. I don't think they've gotten if from reading the newspapers. I think they've gotten it from the way the newspapers have gone about litigating news issues. They have litigated them in the highest toned rhetoric of the First Amendment, which when you ask them what do they mean by it, a lot of journalists have a lot of trouble saying what they mean. They have asserted some God-given right not to turn over outtakes, which still evades me... They've asserted a reporter's source privilege in terms that I think could be--I think you can legitimately defend a reporter's source privilege--but in fact the press advanced it in the most incredibly high-toned terms... They've built up a backlog of incredulity amongst judges, where the judge says. "Oh, here comes the newspaper with the hot-air argument again...