"Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose," as Janis Joplin sang it most memorably in "Bobby McGee." With billions of dollars to lose, big news organizations don’t seem to feel so free anymore, at least when it comes to exposing corporate misconduct. On the other hand, some of these mega-businesses seem all too free about taking advantage of their sources.

Consider these recent examples:

• CBS kills a "60 Minutes" interview with a former tobacco company executive for fear of being sued by the company (apparently Brown & Williamson) for inducing the source to breach his corporate secrecy agreement.
• ABC settles a libel suit by another tobacco company (Philip Morris) by issuing a humiliating apology-and a $15 million check for the plaintiff’s legal fees-rather than risk a gazillion-dollar judgment for an exposé that was mainly true.
• Business Week gets slapped with a rare, court-ordered prior restraint that stalls for three weeks its publication of highly newsworthy sealed documents (which showed Bankers Trust employees joking about ripping off clients on deals for derivative securities) that a reporter had lawfully obtained.

What’s going on here? Are the networks becoming profit-driven cowards, too worried about remote risks of liability, and too entangled with other business interests, to provide robust scrutiny of other big companies? Or are the risks of ruinous liability for legitimate journalism all too real?

There is probably some truth in both these explanations. But it also turns out-at least in the "60 Minutes" flap-that something else is at work. That something is questionable conduct, and lack of candor, on the part of the news organizations themselves. If the First Amendment is losing some of its potency as a shield for journalists, these news organizations share some of the blame: Lame journalism makes bad law.

It turns out that CBS offered the former tobacco executive unusual (although not necessarily improper) enticements to violate his secrecy agreement. It also turns out that when the going got rough, CBS and the vaunted "60 Minutes" team-allegedly-committed a cardinal sin against journalistic ethics: burning their source.

That is the import of a Wall Street Journal scoop on Nov. 16, which showed the killing of the "60 Minutes" interview with the still anonymous former tobacco executive to be a far more tangled web than was initially acknowledged by CBS, its executives, or its journalists.

For a week after the story broke on Nov. 9, CBS and people like Mike Wallace of "60 Minutes" led the world to believe that the decision to kill the interview had been driven by fear of a gargantuan damage award simply for receiving and airing information from a source who had signed a secrecy agreement with his former employer.

This version of events spread understandable bafflement and outrage among journalists and media lawyers. No news organization has ever (as far as I know) been held liable under an interference-with-contractual-relations theory just for publishing newsworthy information from a source who had signed a nondisclosure adhesion contract. Indeed, journalists routinely do this and must if they are to expose questionable conduct inside large, secretive organizations, including the U.S. government.

So the CBS decision to cancel the interview at first seemed an act of singular cowardice, if not a reflection of the network’s financial entanglements.

But now comes The Wall Street Journal with some new facts, which explain why CBS’s lawyers were so worried about a possible lawsuit (or two): CBS had agreed to an unusual contract to indemnify the former tobacco executive in the event of a libel suit against him; CBS had paid a $12,000 consulting fee to this same source for help on a March 1994 "60 Minutes" segment on the fire hazards of cigarettes; and CBS had promised him (in writing) that his interview wouldn’t be aired without his consent- which he never granted.

While the fatness of the $12,000 consulting fee might raise the question in a jury’s mind whether CBS was paying for more than just the source’s help with the 1994 segment, the answer is not necessarily yes. And there’s nothing wrong with CBS’s promise to indemnify the source for truthful statements that might spur an unwarranted libel suit. Indeed, the source would have been risking personal financial ruin had he agreed to an on-the-record interview without a broader indemnification agreement-one covering liability for breach of the secrecy agreement as well as for libel.

Apparently realizing this, the source asked CBS for broader indemnification. CBS refused; rather than bet the company on its ability to sell the courts on the proposition that the source had a right to breach his own secrecy agreement. That was perfectly sensible, but came with a cost: The source’s lawyer sent CBS a letter, on Nov. 9, stating that the source was withholding his consent to the airing of the interview and would construe any mention of him as a promise by CBS to pay all his legal costs and damages in any lawsuit.

Now the lawyer (also anonymous) is complaining that CBS betrayed the source’s confidence in the expurgated report that "60 Minutes" did air on Nov. 12, by disclosing enough of the secrecy agreement to provide clues to his identity. So maybe CBS will end up getting sued-not by the tobacco company it was trying to expose, but by the source it was trying to exploit.

And maybe it should be sued-if (and it’s a big if) CBS in fact promised the source complete confidentiality and then, for the sake of a slightly sexier story, aired clues to the source’s identity that the tobacco company could not have picked up elsewhere. The Supreme Court ruled in 1991, in Cohen v. Cowles Media Co., that the First Amendment did not shield a newspaper from a lawsuit for breaching its own reporter’s promise of confidentiality by publishing a source’s name without his consent.

The aroma of source-burning also lingers in the wake of Business Week’s delayed publication of information filed under seal in a suit by Procter & Gamble against Bankers Trust.

The magazine was justified in fighting a clumsy and unconstitutional prior restraint order by U.S. District Judge John Feikens. But was it justified in seizing upon an innocent slip by a longtime confidential source, who had provided the materials-without knowing they were sealed-at the request of a similarly uninformed reporter (who formerly worked at Legal Times)? And in dribbling out enough information in pursuit of litigation advantage to help expose the source? And-after the exposed source had implausibly contradicted the reporter’s testimony-in impeaching him with notes of their off-the-record conversations about unrelated matters? I don’t think so.

ABC didn’t burn any sources in its February 1994 "Day One" broadcast claiming that tobacco companies manipulate the level of nicotine in cigarettes, making them more addictive than they need to be. This claim was substantially true. But ABC hyped its story by conveying the misleading implication that tobacco companies put more nicotine into cigarettes than naturally occurs in tobacco leaves. The story was also arguably flawed by tendentiously selective quotation of another anonymous source. These journalistic slips should not have created a risk of a ruinous libel award. But ABC decided they did and caved in to Philip Morris.

None of these cases necessarily involves clearly unethical conduct by journalists. But each of them seems to involve the kind of corner-cutting that makes journalists look lame when they clamor for sweeping First Amendment protections. This lameness is not a new phenomenon. In Supreme Court briefs filed in 1990 and 1991, for example, many of the nation’s largest news organizations contended that the First Amendment licensed them to engage in grossly unethical conduct: In the Cowles Media case, the media parties and amici claimed a constitutional right to betray promises of confidentiality by identifying their sources without fear of liability to themselves. And in Masson v. The New Yorker (1991), the defendants and some of the same media amici claimed the magazine was immune from libel liability even if (as was alleged) it had deliberately attributed fictitious (as well as embarrassing) quotations to the plaintiff.

The Supreme Court rightly rejected both claims. We can only hope that these decisions will not be unwisely extended to threaten legitimate journalism. For example, Cowles Media, which asserts that the First Amendment is ordinarily not offended by "enforcement against the press" of "generally applicable laws," should not be deemed a green light for a lawsuit against anyone who ever publishes information obtained (no matter how cleanly) from a source who has signed a secrecy agreement.

The marketplace of ideas does need broad First Amendment protections for journalists who seek to expose wrongdoing (although not for those willing to burn their sources). Here’s hoping the courts don’t lose sight of that message out of distaste for the conduct of some of the messengers.