The Press: The Silent Four

Their final appeal denied by the California Supreme Court, four Fresno Bee newsmen last week became the largest group of U.S. journalists to be jailed for a single story. The Fresno four—Managing Editor George F. Gruner, former City Editor James H. Bort Jr., and Reporters William K. Patterson and Joe Rosato—will not be released until they tell how they obtained secret grand jury testimony quoted in a 1975 story about local corruption, or until a judge becomes convinced they cannot be forced to talk. Before the four entered a county prison farm at Caruthers late last week, they vowed never to...