Thank God There Are People Like This

Judith Miller promised that she'd keep her source's identity private and she's going to jail for it.

I totally respect what she is doing.

I don't really care if "national security" issues are at stake.

If you don't keep your sources secret, they won't talk.

And then what have we got?

Here are some quotes from the NY Times story on their own reporter:

Ms. Miller herself told the court that she would not reveal her source no matter how long they jailed her.

"If journalists cannot be trusted to guarantee confidentiality, then journalists cannot function and there cannot be a free press," she read from a statement as she stood before Judge Hogan. "The right of civil disobedience is based on personal conscience, it is fundamental to our system and it is honored throughout our history," she said before court officers led her away, looking shaken.

I am with her 100%.  Thank god there are people like her in this world.

Comments

[Farhan Memon]

In one sense I agree with your sentiment that Judith Miller is engaging in a noble deed by falling on her sword as a matter of principle. Indeed the Executive Editor of the NY Times is correct that the government's pursuit of her secret source threatens the viability of any serious investigative effort into the inner workings of the government, especially one that has led us to war on a pack of lies.

However even Miller is not without sin. She is part of a cabal of unquestioning reporters who for decades have been neocon mouth pieces using there journalistic positions to bash Islam, support Israel, and circulate unverified stories for the likes of Ahmed Chalabi. In fact the Times' own mea culpa found serious problems with much of Miller's reporting on Iraq.

So if Miller is setting herself up as a holy journalistic martyr. Her faults ought to be given as much space as her selflessness. Then again perhaps her source would allow the reading public to connect the dots and reveal the rationale behind much of her erroneous reporting in Iraq and the MidEast.

[Derek Scruggs]

I won't go as far as Farhan, but it *is* worth noting that, if the source is Karl Rove, it kinda calls into question that whole "liberal media" canard, donnit?

[Jamie]

I, too, have trouble reading this as defender-of-the-free-press. She was a tool of the administration (virtually nobody disagrees that that's what it pretty clearly is) attacking their political enemies.

Is that the sort of "free and independent press" we want?

Nobody is (or, at least, should be) above the law.

That doesn't mean I wouldn't back the principal, but I have a hard time getting behind her as a hero.

[Mark Sigal]

That the media is imperfect and subject to all of the biases, political pressures and indiscretions is kind of like, "Yeah, so what's your point?"

The bottom line in my opinion is that when presidential politics becomes a cynical zero-sum game as it has been with this administration and when the supreme court becomes sufficiently politicized that it fails to protect rights that the average American would consider inalienable, then the enemy is within.

Protecting sources is a fundamental element of a vibrant free press -- something easy to "yeah but..." until you live in a world where the institution no longer exists.

Btw, for those who are unfamiliar with the full story, Vanity Fair did a great expose on this some months back.

[Jamie]

I know this looks like inside baseball at some point, but lest anyone forget, Miller and Fitzgerald have a history.

I'm aware of the backstory, and, as I said, I'd love to see her as a martyr of the free press. If only she were.

[Ted]

The whole point of a free press is an open dialog will be established. However, Miller, rather than being the champion of the First Amendment, is an obstructionist as she is complicit in supressing a whistle-blower.

My initial gut reaction was to say that she is doing the right thing. However, in reality, she is going to be featured prominently on right wing talk radio as an example of how the fanatics are truly in favor of free speech. I find it to be Orwellian double speak.

Keep up the fantastic work Fred!

[Tony Alva]

The partisan hypocrisy is so deep in this comments section here it's hard to stay afloat. Let me get this straight: because this journalist wrote favorable articles about the administration her cause is somehow diminished? Can't the conundrum Jackson cites be applied to any other source protection challenges in the past with all the same labels?

I don't see her as anything but a journalist who is standing by her ethics. I think the law is clearer than she thinks on this issue, but it's her fight to fight. I guess you free press folks will only rally behind those reporters who are critical of the current administration. Unbelievable.

Farhan's take is accurate, but the balance should be equal when discussing a 'Martyr's' past (read: the Italian journalist who was released from captivity in Iraq a few months ago and involved in the shooting at a checkpoint).

Either it’s a ethically stand for all of free press, or no such thing ever existed. I won't read her stuff, but like Fred, I laud her efforts.

[Jamie]

If Tony is responding to me, perhaps I didn't make my point clear enough.

Here we have a citizen refusing to respect the law in front of a grand jury. That she's a journalist doesn't matter.

Or have we forgotten that bloggers are journalists as well? Should I have the right to contempt in front of a gand jury? Should Fred? If not, do we draw a line between "citizen journalists" and "real journalists"? Where?

The partisanship, if that's how you choose to read it, comes in play for me where she's been nothing but an administration shill. I do dislike the current bunch, but that would have been my reading if she had shilled for Clinton, Reagan or Nixon. Being a shill makes it hard for me to respect what I would otherwise see as a dignified stand on principal.

As I said before, I support a reasonable stand on principal, even if I at the same time support the rule of law and have trouble getting terribly worked up about this one.

[Tony Alva]

Jamie,

Actually, I completely agree with your last paragraph on a personal level. Who I’m aiming my comments at are those faux civil libertarians that seem to be abandoning this women solely on the basis that she happened to be a shill for the GOP. Again, I think she’s fighting a losing battle because the law is fairly clear about this matter. I don’t think she’ll get past the local courts with her case and may end up in jail for a long time. At the same time I laud the fact that she is standing by a principle that, in her line of work and to many other Americans, she finds ethical issues with. How’d they feel had Nixon been a Dem and Woodstein was asked to give up Deep Throat? Would they be rallying the country to the defense of the free press, or would they leave them in jail to rot?

Some comments above suggest that since the GOP MIGHT be able to point to her as a partisan free presser, then her cause is not worthy. That’s the part that I simply find amazing.

No matter how one feels about this case one way or the other, the issue is free press for everybody, not liberals exclusively.

[mano]

I like Wycliff's views much better mano

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnist/wycliff/chi-0507070129jul07,1,4908288.column

FROM THE PUBLIC EDITOR

The messiness of promises
Don Wycliff
From the Public Editor
Advertisement

July 7, 2005

I just looked out my office window and the sky, you'll be relieved to know, appears to be firmly in its customary place. Of course it still could fall at any minute, making prophets of all the journalistic Chicken Littles who have been warning lately of that impending catastrophe.

Forgive me. I don't mean to make light of the predicament of Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper, which has given rise to this current wailing and gnashing of teeth, or of the 1st Amendment and the principle of freedom of the press and the threats thereto. But I do think all of us in the news business need to get a grip on ourselves and think more clearly about what's happening here.

The sky is not falling. The American way of life as we've known it is not coming to an end. Most important, freedom of the press is not about to disappear from these United States, although it will continue to be, as it almost always is, taken for granted and underappreciated by most of those for whose benefit it exists.

Miller, of The New York Times, has gone to jail because she believes that her job as a journalist exempts her from an obligation of citizenship that applies to all but a few other Americans in a few special circumstances: to testify truthfully when called as a witness before a duly constituted federal grand jury.

I happen not to agree with her. I think that even journalists bear that obligation of citizenship, and that if we don't want to get caught up in situations like hers and Time magazine's Matt Cooper's, we need to become far more discriminating about when and to whom we promise anonymity.

More fundamentally, I think we need to become far more realistic about the 1st Amendment, quit talking about it as if it were some ultimate trump card that puts journalists above the law and beyond accountability, and recognize it for what it is: a constitutional tool that belongs to all the people for the protection of the right of all the people to be informed about the working of their government.

Most important, I think we need to rethink our current headlong rush to trade away the 1st Amendment in its fullness for the protection that a federal "shield law" would confer upon some tiny fraction of "the people" who call themselves journalists.

We need to be clear about several things in particular.

First, Miller is in jail not because she refused to divulge the name of a Deep Throat, who saw the constitutional order of the nation imperiled and so became a confidential source to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in their Watergate reporting.

Miller is in jail because she promised confidentiality to a rat--someone who was trying to get back at a political critic of the current administration by revealing to the world that the critic's wife was a secret agent of the United States government. In other words, the source chose to play politics by playing with the life of an American spy, not to mention all of her contacts.

We in the news business can argue that the nature of the source shouldn't matter, that the only thing that matters is that we made a promise and so we're bound to keep it.

But the fact is that it matters to the American people, who know the difference between a poodle and a polecat and whose reactions to these cases determine whether the sort of exemption that Miller and Cooper tried to claim will be honored. That it has not been in this case is not just a function of the law and the judicial system, but also of the fact that the American people see nothing important at stake for the nation. In other words, they smell a rat.

Second, we are asked to believe that Miller's and Cooper's current fix is the result of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's overzealousness. No question Fitzgerald is ardent in the pursuit of his work. But he has not been alone in concluding that these two reporters are his last resort for the information he seeks in a case of high importance to the nation's security.

If we believe Fitzgerald has been overzealous, we also must believe that the entire federal judiciary, from district court level to the Supreme Court, Democratic appointees as well as Republican, has been overcome by an excess of zeal. I find that conclusion impossible to draw.

Last--for now anyway--we are told that this case will make it harder for reporters to get the information they need to serve the public's right to know by making sources more reluctant to speak with reporters off the record.

That's not an argument to sneeze at. The fact is that promises of confidentiality are absolutely essential in many newsgathering situations. But I dare say those situations are far fewer in number than are the number of cases in which promises are made simply as a matter of routine.

Is it absurd to think that a promise of confidentiality may engender even greater trust in the future, precisely because any source will know that it is a deeply considered action, made by a reporter who has reflected on what the cost ultimately may be?

----------

Don Wycliff is the Tribune's public editor. He listens to readers' concerns and questions about the paper's coverage and writes weekly about current issues in journalism. E-mail: dwycliff@tribune.com.

Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune

[mano]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnist/wycliff/chi-0507070129jul07,1,4908288.column

FROM THE PUBLIC EDITOR

The messiness of promises
Don Wycliff
From the Public Editor
Advertisement

July 7, 2005

I just looked out my office window and the sky, you'll be relieved to know, appears to be firmly in its customary place. Of course it still could fall at any minute, making prophets of all the journalistic Chicken Littles who have been warning lately of that impending catastrophe.

Forgive me. I don't mean to make light of the predicament of Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper, which has given rise to this current wailing and gnashing of teeth, or of the 1st Amendment and the principle of freedom of the press and the threats thereto. But I do think all of us in the news business need to get a grip on ourselves and think more clearly about what's happening here.

The sky is not falling. The American way of life as we've known it is not coming to an end. Most important, freedom of the press is not about to disappear from these United States, although it will continue to be, as it almost always is, taken for granted and underappreciated by most of those for whose benefit it exists.

Miller, of The New York Times, has gone to jail because she believes that her job as a journalist exempts her from an obligation of citizenship that applies to all but a few other Americans in a few special circumstances: to testify truthfully when called as a witness before a duly constituted federal grand jury.

I happen not to agree with her. I think that even journalists bear that obligation of citizenship, and that if we don't want to get caught up in situations like hers and Time magazine's Matt Cooper's, we need to become far more discriminating about when and to whom we promise anonymity.

More fundamentally, I think we need to become far more realistic about the 1st Amendment, quit talking about it as if it were some ultimate trump card that puts journalists above the law and beyond accountability, and recognize it for what it is: a constitutional tool that belongs to all the people for the protection of the right of all the people to be informed about the working of their government.

Most important, I think we need to rethink our current headlong rush to trade away the 1st Amendment in its fullness for the protection that a federal "shield law" would confer upon some tiny fraction of "the people" who call themselves journalists.

We need to be clear about several things in particular.

First, Miller is in jail not because she refused to divulge the name of a Deep Throat, who saw the constitutional order of the nation imperiled and so became a confidential source to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in their Watergate reporting.

Miller is in jail because she promised confidentiality to a rat--someone who was trying to get back at a political critic of the current administration by revealing to the world that the critic's wife was a secret agent of the United States government. In other words, the source chose to play politics by playing with the life of an American spy, not to mention all of her contacts.

We in the news business can argue that the nature of the source shouldn't matter, that the only thing that matters is that we made a promise and so we're bound to keep it.

But the fact is that it matters to the American people, who know the difference between a poodle and a polecat and whose reactions to these cases determine whether the sort of exemption that Miller and Cooper tried to claim will be honored. That it has not been in this case is not just a function of the law and the judicial system, but also of the fact that the American people see nothing important at stake for the nation. In other words, they smell a rat.

Second, we are asked to believe that Miller's and Cooper's current fix is the result of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's overzealousness. No question Fitzgerald is ardent in the pursuit of his work. But he has not been alone in concluding that these two reporters are his last resort for the information he seeks in a case of high importance to the nation's security.

If we believe Fitzgerald has been overzealous, we also must believe that the entire federal judiciary, from district court level to the Supreme Court, Democratic appointees as well as Republican, has been overcome by an excess of zeal. I find that conclusion impossible to draw.

Last--for now anyway--we are told that this case will make it harder for reporters to get the information they need to serve the public's right to know by making sources more reluctant to speak with reporters off the record.

That's not an argument to sneeze at. The fact is that promises of confidentiality are absolutely essential in many newsgathering situations. But I dare say those situations are far fewer in number than are the number of cases in which promises are made simply as a matter of routine.

Is it absurd to think that a promise of confidentiality may engender even greater trust in the future, precisely because any source will know that it is a deeply considered action, made by a reporter who has reflected on what the cost ultimately may be?

----------
I like Wycliff's view's much better :

Don Wycliff is the Tribune's public editor. He listens to readers' concerns and questions about the paper's coverage and writes weekly about current issues in journalism. E-mail: dwycliff@tribune.com.

Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune

[jackson]

What did I say? Or was that another 'Jackson'? What I do say is that she's a creep, but I support her cause, as I would anyone else who says F.U. to the Federal Courts. In the end though, I have not a rat's ass to give on the matter. The New York Times is crap. Big journalism is dead at the hands of scum like Miller, long live the new journalism! What Is truth anyway? The truth is I need a drink.

[Bounce]

The bottom line is that protecting her sources is one of the few journalistic principals that Miller actually got right. Let's not forget all of the other times she simply flouted standards for credible research and writing. Miller's no hero; just a bad journalist who's done one good thing.

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