Lancaster County Coroner Dr. G. Gary Kirchner said Tuesday he is disappointed, but not angry, with reporters who provided grand jury testimony leading to his arrest on charges he gave them a password to a restricted part of the county's 911 communications Web site.

"Anger is not my shtick," Kirchner said in a phone interview in which he said he has no memory of providing Intelligencer Journal reporters with his password to a Web log of incidents for the coroner, fire officials and emergency responders.

"I do not recall doing that," said Kirchner, 73, a retired surgeon. "I do not have an independent recollection of doing that."

A 19-page state grand jury report released Monday alleges Kirchner breached Web security and broke the law by allowing reporters to access information "to which they were not entitled."

The use of the Web site is being questioned by experts in media ethics. They say the practice should have raised red flags in the newsroom.

"If this site was clearly off limits except for those people who were authorized to gain access, I think the journalists should have stopped and thought long and hard about what they were doing," said Elizabeth K. Hansen, a professor of media ethics at Eastern Kentucky University who serves on the Society of Professional Journalists' ethics committee.

But George C. Werner, the attorney representing the Intell in the case, said, "It became clear during this investigation that the reporters had been authorized — indeed invited — by the coroner to use his password and user name to access his portion of the Web site."

No reporters were charged, but the grand jury alleged that Kirchner conspired with the reporters by providing them with the information necessary to access his portion of the Web site.

"This does not mean the reporters themselves engaged in criminal conduct," Werner said.

When reporters first started looking at the Web log in early 2004, no notice appeared to warn against unauthorized access. A warning began appearing several months later. The site started displaying two warning pages after March 2005.

Kirchner said the reporters' acceptance of immunity from prosecution violates journalistic ethics, although state Attorney General Tom Corbett forced the reporters to testify by granting them immunity, which they had not sought.

"I think (the ethics violation is) explained better by others than by me," Kirchner said when asked to explain. "I'm not an authority on ethics."

The Intell has concluded, after an internal probe, that neither the newspaper nor any of its staff members had an agreement of confidentiality with Kirchner regarding use of the Web site, Werner said.

If such an agreement had existed, staff members would have exercised their rights under the Pennsylvania Shield Law to refuse to testify when they were called before the grand jury, he said.

According to the grand jury report, Carrie Cassidy, a reporter for the Intell from 2000 to 2004, testified that Kirchner informed her of the Web site and gave her his password to get coroner-related information without calling him.

"I don't even recognize her name," Kirchner said Tuesday, "and it's highly unlikely that I would have offered (the password) to her for that.

"I wear a Bluetooth telephone earpiece at all times. I answer questions from everybody and anybody 24 hours a day, seven days a week. ... It would not be me to say, 'Oh, jeez. Don't bother me. Here's a way to get your information without telephoning.' "

Kirchner said he had nothing to gain by giving reporters his password.

"It's not like somebody said, 'Here's $2 for the password,' " he said. "There's no gain, no sane reason for it."

Kirchner said he found the Web site of no use for his work.

"In '04, when I came into office, I tried it out maybe a half dozen times, he said. "I found nothing of interest in it, and I just quit using it.

"The information that I saw (on the Web log) was information I already had. And I didn't need to get it off the Web site, so I didn't."

In the interview, Kirchner expressed dismay at being handcuffed while being transported from the Lancaster city police station to his arraignment in Columbia.

He called the handcuffing "the most demeaning thing that's ever happened to me in my life" and described the atmosphere while being walked handcuffed before the news media "a staged circus event."

Experts in media ethics have raised questions about what journalists involved in the case could have done differently.

Fred Brown, vice chair of the Society for Professional Journalists' ethics committee and the writer of an ethics column for Quill magazine, said the first commandment of the Society's code of ethics is "seek truth and report it."

"I would say the reporters were following the first obligation, getting access to as much information as possible and reporting it when it's significant," Brown said.

"But once they became aware this was not entirely legal, I think then they needed to carefully consider: Was the information they were getting of such value as to justify their continued use of a process they knew was not legal?"

To this point, Werner has said the reporters continually believed they had legal authorization to access the site.

Brown said reporters have certain immunities and privileges, but are not above the law.

"Any ethical dilemma needs to be recognized and discussed," Brown said.

"Newspapers should have a general policy of discussing any confidential information. That includes the use of anonymous sources, what justifies confidentiality and access to things that other people don't have."

Brown, however, said he considered the coroner the "major player" in the  case and "the one whose ethics and motivations are the most open to question."

Hansen, the Eastern Kentucky University professor, said if the reporters believed they had permission to access the Web site and that viewing it wasn't against the law, "there would not have been the warning bells that said maybe we should not be here."

"I could see how it would be easy — because you've been given access — to think it's OK to look at those files," she said. "It doesn't mean that it necessarily was (legal), but you would be able to justify it to yourself."

But journalists sometimes forget they "don't have any greater right of access than Tom, Dick or Harry off the street, and as a journalist you can't break the law," she said.

"Most of the time when the news media find themselves in ethical hot water, it's because they didn't stop to think about the possible consequences of what they were doing," Hansen said.

Responding to the criticism, Intelligencer Journal editor Ray Shaw said, "I have great respect for the views of newspaper ethicists, some of whom have called into question our actions in accessing the 911 Web site."

"Given what we know now, we certainly would have handled things differently then and will use this experience to improve our policies and training in the future," Shaw said.

"But I'm absolutely convinced that the staff members of the Intell involved  had no doubts that they had the authority, from someone in a position to give it, to make use of a limited portion of this site," he said.

"We greatly value the trust the public places in us to deliver the news  thoroughly, accurately and, certainly, ethically.

"We would never knowingly do anything to damage that trust — in the past, at the present and in the future."

Jeff Hawkes' e-mail address is jhawkes@lnpnews.com.