PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island (AP) – A TV reporter was sentenced to spend six months confined in his home for refusing to reveal who leaked him an FBI videotape of a politician taking a bribe.

Jim Taricani, 55, was sentenced Thursday for defying an order from US District Judge Ernest Torres to identify his source. Found guilty last month, Taricani could have gotten up to six months in prison on the criminal contempt conviction.

Prosecutors recommended home confinement for Taricani because he had a heart transplant in 1996 and takes medication daily to prevent organ rejection. The judge said the reporter’s health was the only reason he didn’t send him to prison.

Taricani is one of several journalists nationwide who have become locked in First Amendment battles with the government over confidential sources. Among them are reporters for Time magazine and The New York Times who have been threatened with jail as part of an investigation into the disclosure of an undercover CIA officer’s identity.

The First Amendment of the US Constitution guarantees such basic rights as freedom of speech and the press.

Less than a week after Taricani was convicted, Providence defence attorney Joseph Bevilacqua Jr, under threat of a subpoena, admitted he was the one who leaked the tape.

Under the law, however, Bevilacqua’s admission did not get the reporter off the hook, and an expert said Bevilacqua could eventually face sanctions, too, for lying about being the leaker.

Taricani testified Thursday that he began dropping hints several months ago to prosecutors regarding the identity of the leaker because he had heard that Bevilacqua may have bragged at a party about his role.

Taricani also acknowledged making an inadvertent comment to an FBI agent that helped lead authorities to Bevilacqua this fall.

In sentencing Taricani, the judge said the WJAR reporter had no First Amendment right to protect a source who broke the law by providing him with information.

He disputed claims that punishing Taricani’s behaviour was an assault on the First Amendment. “The assaults we have here are assaults on the rule of law, assaults on the system of criminal justice,” Torres said.

He also chided journalists in general for thinking they have “exclusive, unreviewable authority” to use confidential sources.

Taricani told the judge he acted in accordance with his principles, and understood he had to accept punishment for disagreeing with the court’s view of the law. “Your honour, I want you to know that I do not consider myself above the law,” he said.

After the sentencing, WJAR praised its reporter for “his strong belief in preserving the relationship between a journalist and his source”. Under the conditions of home confinement, which began Thursday evening, Taricani may leave the house only for medical care, may not do any reporting or media appearances, may not access the Internet, and may have visitors only during certain hours.

The international reporters’ rights group Reporters Without Borders said the case showed that journalism is under pressure.

“The role of the press in providing checks and balances is under fire (at) this time, and the US courts must understand that if the confidentiality of journalists’ sources is not guaranteed, no one will go to them with sensitive information,” the group said.

The FBI tape of a mayoral aide taking a $1,000 payoff was part of a corruption probe that ultimately sent former Mayor Vincent “Buddy” Cianci and other city officials to federal prison.

Taricani broke no law by airing the footage, but attorneys, investigators and defendants were under court order not to release any tapes connected to the probe, and a special prosecutor had been appointed to find out who leaked it.

After a three-year investigation failed to turn up the source, Torres found Taricani in civil contempt in March and began fining him $1,000 a day to compel him to speak.

Taricani refused, saying he had promised his source anonymity, and ran up $85,000 in fines, paid for by his NBC-affiliated station, before the judge turned up the pressure by charging him with criminal contempt.

The reporter called his November 18 conviction an “assault on journalistic freedom”. Bevilacqua, the source of the tape, was the lawyer for a former city tax official who pleaded guilty in the corruption scandal. Bevilacqua told prosecutors that he never required the reporter to withhold his identity – something Taricani disputed.