Regular readers of these columns know that we’re more likely to take issue with our colleagues over at the New York Times than to laud them. But an exception to the pattern is the case of the refusal of two New York Times reporters, Jeff Gerth and James Risen, to answer questions about their sources for stories they wrote about a Los Alamos nuclear scientist, Wen Ho Lee. The questions came in the context of depositions that had been ordered by a federal judge in Washington, Thomas Penfield Jackson, in connection with Mr. Lee’s civil lawsuit against the federal government. A lawyer, Floyd Abrams, who represents the reporters, told The New York Sun earlier this month that both journalists have refused to answer questions about their confidential sources. He said he expected that Mr. Lee’s lawyer would ask Judge Jackson to hold the reporters in contempt of court.

The logic of the reporters’ refusal to cooperate is easy to understand from a First Amendment perspective. If any aggrieved subject of a news article could file a civil suit to force the disclosure of the name of every source that cooperated in preparing the article, the supply of cooperative sources would doubtless soon diminish to a vanishing point. That would put quite a dent in the First Amendment guarantee of a free press, and it would leave the public less informed. Partisans of the free press are rooting for the Times reporters and their lawyer, Mr. Abrams, to prevail in their legal battle.

A refusal by the Times to cooperate with a judge’s order in this case would stand on stronger ground, however, had the Times itself taken a different stance in the case of Roy Moore, the Alabama judge who was removed for having a Ten Commandments statue in his courthouse. A Times editorial criticized the judge for his lack of “respect for the rule of law.” Now, it can be argued that the Times is merely disrespecting a district court judge, while Judge Moore disrespected a ruling that worked its way all through the various appeals routes. In both cases, however, a person had the courage to decide that there were some principles worth disobeying a court order for.