US: Time magazine is to comply with a court order to hand over the notes of a reporter threatened with imprisonment for not revealing his source in the investigation into the possibly criminal leak of a CIA officer's name.
The New York Times, one of whose reporters is also threatened with jail in the same case, said it was "deeply disappointed" at Time's decision.
US District Judge Thomas Hogan on Wednesday threatened to imprison Time reporter Matthew Cooper and the New York Times's Judith Miller for contempt for refusing to disclose their sources to a grand jury.
This followed Monday's rejection by the US Supreme Court of the two journalists' appeal that they were protected by the First Amendment of the US constitution, guaranteeing free speech, from revealing their source.
Judge Hogan on Wednesday gave the reporters a week to agree to testify or face jail. If sentenced they could remain in prison until October when the grand jury investigating the leak expires.
Time said it believed its decision dispensed with the need for Cooper to testify and that it removed any justification for imprisonment. The Supreme Court "has limited press freedom in ways that will have a chilling effect on our work and that may damage the free flow of information that is so necessary in a democratic society". But the same constitution that protected the freedom of the press "required obedience to final decisions of the courts and respect for their rulings and judgments".
Norman Pearlstine, Time's editor in chief, said: "I believe we will turn over all the records, notes and e-mail trafficking going over our company system."
Once the Supreme Court made its ruling there was no other choice but to comply, he said.
New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger said: "We are deeply disappointed by Time Inc's decision to deliver the subpoenaed records". The paper's focus was on supporting Judith Miller "during this difficult time".
"We faced similar pressures in 1978 when both our reporter Myron Farber and the Times Company were held in contempt of court for refusing to provide the names of confidential sources," Mr Sulzberger said.
Farber served 40 days in prison when found guilty of criminal contempt in a New Jersey court for refusing to turn over his notes in the case of a doctor suspected of murdering patients.
Unlike Time, the New York Times is not a defendant because Miller did not publish the information she got about the CIA official, Valerie Plame.
Ms Plame's name was leaked by unnamed senior Bush administration officials in 2003 after the White House was angered by charges from her husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson, that it had manipulated intelligence to justify war against Iraq.