"Becoming the Story" premieres online today. Follow veteran sportswriter Mark Fainaru-Wada and longtime investigative journalist Lance Williams as they reveal the link between high-profile athletes and a Bay Area laboratory that distributed performance-enhancing steroids. Personally congratulated by President Bush for what he called “a service” to the public, Williams and Fainaru-Wada faced spending 18 months in prison for refusing to divulge the identity of a confidential source that had provided them with key evidence.

>> Read Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada’s original reporting in the SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, including the reporters’ first story to cite verbatim leaked grand jury testimony obtained from a confidential source to their most recent story on former BALCO prosecutor Kevin Ryan. Check out THE CHRONICLE’s special page on the BALCO investigation for the paper’s complete coverage of the doping scandal and the reporters’ plight.

>> Also on the site. Happy Birthday, FOIA. It’s the 41st anniversary of the signing of the Freedom of Information Act by President Lyndon Johnson. Is the law that opened the government’s filing cabinets to public scrutiny having a mid-life crisis? Read "Forty-Odd Years of Freedom ... Sort of" by Tom Casciato, EXPOSÉ’s Executive Producer.

Blog content provided this week by the EXPOSÉ production team