The jailing of a New York Times reporter on contempt charges for failing to identify a confidential source is a terrible blow to the ability of an independent press to do its job.

Judith Miller is being punished because she has refused to testify before a grand jury about information she may have been given regarding the identity of a covert CIA operative and her outing by columnist Robert Novak. A special prosecutor was appointed to investigate whether someone in the Bush administration broke a federal law against identifying undercover agents by leaking the name of Valerie Plame in an effort to discredit diplomat Joseph Wilson, a critic of the president’s Iraq policies.

In his zeal to crack the case, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has gone after two reporters: Miller and Time magazine’s Matthew Cooper. At crunch time, Cooper agreed to testify, saying that his source had given him permission to break his confidentiality agreement.

The case is tangled up, and there’s no good information on what twists it has taken. Fitzgerald is playing it all close to his vest, and there has been no public acknowledgment that a crime was definitely committed or what the scope of the investigation actually is. That’s all a secret. Yet a reporter, who never wrote a story about the Plame affair, is going to jail.

Forty-nine states and the District of Columbia have some type of reporter shield law on the books. It’s time for the federal government to follow suit.

We are not arguing that reporters are above the law. Instead, we argue that the law that allows reporters to be imprisoned for doing their jobs should be changed.

Without the protection of confidentiality, sources with knowledge of wrongdoing won’t come forward to shine light into the darkest corners of the country’s governance. It’s unfortunate that the test case involves a rat’s nest of political dirty tricks, but reality seldom provides the convenience of perfect villains and heroes.

It’s time for Congress to address this flaw in the law by creating a federal shield for reporters.