Updated: Apr 9 1998 10:56AM

Want to know more about Ken Starr's nearly written report on the Monica Lewinsky affair? Or the claims of executive privilege reportedly being asserted by Bruce Lindsey and Sidney Blumenthal? Ken Starr wouldn't mind if you did, but the federal courts aren't too happy about the idea. Judge Norma Holloway Johnson sealed all courtroom documents pertaining to proceedings into executive privilege a while back. Now a three-judge appeal panel appears ready to strike down a request by the combined forces of the media to give the hearings a fresh breath of First Amendment air.

Since grand juries are secret by tradition, the federal argument goes, anything relating to a grand jury case should be secret too. Judge David Tatel added it would be "disruptive" to keep clearing the public out every time the court discussed grand jury evidence. Nathaniel Speights, a lawyer for Monica Lewinsky, claimed the motion filed by a dozen news organizations was "about selling newspapers and getting TV ratings." True enough -- but there is also, some say, a small corner of a journalist's mind concerned with the public's right to know. As William Safire writes in Thursday's New York Times, "Never in modern constitutional history has the Federal judiciary so undermined the First Amendment." Perhaps that's worth being disruptive about.

-- Chris Taylor