Yesterday federal judge Thomas F. Hogan sent a reporter to jail
for refusing to reveal a source in an investigation into a Bush
Administration leak that resulted in the publication of the name of
an undercover CIA agent. Knowingly doing that is a crime.
Yesterday federal judge Thomas F. Hogan sent a reporter to jail for refusing to reveal a source in an investigation into a Bush Administration leak that resulted in the publication of the name of an undercover CIA agent. Knowingly doing that is a crime.
It doesn’t matter that the reporter in question is Judy Miller of the New York Times. It could easily have been, under different circumstances, our own Erin Musgrave.
Some months ago this paper published a story that relied on a source who gave us the results of a confidential investigation of District Attorney John Sarsfield, which revealed credible accusations of preferential treatment and retaliation by the district attorney.
Without a promise of anonymity, Ms. Musgrave would not have gotten that information, and the public would have been unaware of problems inside the office of this county’s highest elected law enforcement official. A county investigation into that leak is ongoing.
Unlike Musgrave, Miller never wrote a story. She conducted interviews, but CIA agent Valerie Plame was outed by conservative columnist Robert Novak.
Someone wanted to get even with Plame’s husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, for an article he published that was critical of the administration’s justifications for going to war in Iraq – specifically, its claims that Iraq had the nuclear material necessary to build a weapon.
Many believe that “someone” was White House advisor Karl Rove.
There’s still no explanation for why Miller is on the hot seat and not Novak. The irony is that Miller’s reporting on WMD for the Times often helped advance the administration’s case in the run-up to the war.
That was a journalistic misstep of the kind that has contributed to a decline in public confidence in the press, which in turn has contributed to an atmosphere in which many think the jailing of Miller is justified.
In the end jailing journalists will only reinforce for reluctant sources the determination of journalists to go to the mat for the public’s right to know.
That is more important than ever at a time of unprecedented classification of government documents. J. William Leonard, former director of the Information Security Oversight Office, was quoted recently in the Times saying that he had even seen material from third-grade textbooks classified.
Judicial abuse of First Amendment guarantees of free speech supports the argument for a new federal shield law to protect journalists from overzealous prosecutors, so that we can go on with the business of telling people the truth about what their government is up to.
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