When I first saw the report about the arrest of a North Carolina journalist who'd called a source and left three messages requesting a comment I thought the justice system in the state had gone completely nuts. The woman, instead of just calling back and telling the reporter she had nothing to say, instead went to the local courthouse and swore out a warrant for the reporter's arrest on harassment charges. The District Attorney has now dropped the charges, but this guy shouldn't have been arrested in the first place.

For any reporter, this sort of thing isn't harassment, it's simply doing your job. I can remember doing something similar, except that it was perhaps a dozen phone calls over two or three days, to the head of a company that the Air Force had contracted to run the mess hall at Vandenberg Air Force Base. The company and its employees were still feeding the troops -- only without paying them. The company issued paychecks, but they were all bouncing.

I must confess, I felt sorry for the secretary who I'm sure had memorized my phone number by the end of the first day, but if anyone can simply get a reporter carted off to jail for leaving more than one message on an answering machine, then we've got serious problems.