Peter --
I'd like to humbly suggest that the phrase "burning a source" doesn't fit this case too easily.
If the phrase is to have any punch at all, "burning" has to suggest that a source has been put in some kind of jeopardy -- their job, their privacy, their status, their life - by a reporter's intentional (and I've seen it more often when it was unintentional) release of their identity and/or information.
In Linda Schiro's case, she had already testified publicly about all of the key matters that she'd originally insisted that we keep secret. So, as I wrote in my Voice story (http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0744,robbins,78219,2.html), she apparently wasn't concerned about her confidentiality any longer, hence it was hard to "burn" her.
Unlike the SF Chronicle case, where the reporters courageously resisted demands and subpoenas to assist a prosecution, I was faced with a very different situation: whether or not to release what was the only existing exculpatory evidence contradicting a prosecutor's efforts to put someone in prison for life.
Would it have been better to have sat silent,  and let someone now talking openly about these same former secrets go uncontradicted by her own ten year old taped words and let someone who may be innocent to jail?  
If an SPJ ethics board member thinks I've still run afoul of the reporter's creed, I'm certainly troubled by that. But having heard encouraging words of approval from the journalists who covered or followed this story here in New York, I can report that out here anyway people in our biz seem to think I did the right thing.
At any rate, I write because someone pointed out your post to me and I thought you might be interested in a response.
Best,
Tom Robbins
P.S. Small coincidence department: Where I sit here at the Voice I am a block from the former East 7th Street home of the wonderful Jessica Mitford and family.

Thanks, Tom. I appreciate your taking the time to respond to my post.

I don't want to get caught up in the syntax. I've now put the title "burning a source" in quotation marks, keeping the wording so that the thread is still apparent despite your protest.

A few observations in response to your post:

I did not think I was accusing you of "run[ning] afoul of the reporter's creed." All of journalism ethics is a balancing act between contradictory demands, in this case seeking and reporting truth (which includes the responsibility to "keep promises") and the section of the code of ethics on minimizing harm (never easy to assess ... and the attempt can sometimes appear to be an exercise in presumption). I did mention your struggle to decide the proper course, which was a commendable example of what we should all be doing with more of our stories.

Nor was I intending to set up a simplistic comparison between two decisions, yours and the Chronicle reporters' -- "bad" and "good." While I commend the Chronicle reporters (one of whom I know from my years at the paper) for standing up to the government and being prepared to go to jail rather than reveal their source, I have some qualms about their actions, including continuing to report a story in an apparently neutral way that they knew to be based on lies. They also used subsequent new information from the by-then publicly tainted source. Hard choices, but I do have some reservations about their decisions and would like to hear their comments.

What I WAS trying to do was to provoke a discussion on a topic that is of pressing interest to us all and clearly needs more definition. I personally think some of the problem lies in the ease with which journalists had out offers of confidentiality; I believe we can do a lot more to qualify in advance the conditions of that confidentiality so that it's not a one-way street and so that reporters are not as easily used for nefarious purposes (e.g. Judith Miller). In any case, my post was intended to provoke discussion, not make authoritative ethical judgments, and I'm glad it at least provoked your response. (Is anyone else out there?)

Peter

And a P.S. reply: Great neighborhood. I have stayed a number of times at that East 7th Street house, and the neighborhood has started to feel like my home-away-from-home in NYC.