MyDD :: Jail Judith Miller

Jail Judith Miller

by Just Karl, Fri Oct 15, 2004 at 09:49:20 AM EST

Judith Miller deserves to go to jail. The Op-Ed in today’s NYTimes is a weak attempt to protect one of their own. They put forth the argument that the purpose of the press is to expose corruption in government and yet they ignore the fact that Miller is protecting government criminals, not exposing them. I don’t pretend to be a scholar of the First Amendment but it seems obvious that she can’t claim to be protecting a source when she didn’t write an article on the subject. Whoever revealed the name to that slimeball Novak put in danger the good and dedicated men and women who protect our country. It is a treasonous act that is a crime against every American. Therefore her situation is that of any citizen who has knowledge of a crime, journalist or dockworker. She’s putting up a fight because she wants to be considered a confidant of the Washington bureaucracy, and that’s fine. But she cannot forget that a crime has been committed by one of these bureaucrats. I wonder if she would cling so tightly to her journalistic excuses if the criminal were a serial rapist or that sniper. By protecting this individual, Miller is complicit in that crime, just as anyone who knowingly hides a murderer running from the law. And she deserves to go to jail for it.

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a note on confidential sources... (none / 0)

Karl, I agree and disagree with your sentiment.
I haven't read the NYT column yet, and i may be about to reproduce it... if so, sorry...
To protect the identity of a confidential source who may have committed a crime is, indeed, to make oneself an accessory to that crime. I agree completely. As a former court and police reporter, I have found myself in that position more than once, and I do agree that it is ethically difficult to defend protecting the privacy interests of a gang member or Oxycontin dealer over assisting the police in combatting problems that society as a whole would prefer see solved.
That said, I've accepted that fact, and even will accept the thought of jail, because it allows me to bring more information to my readers. It's an occupational hazard. Essentially, it boils down to a promise being a promise, and in journalism, like many other professions, you are only as good as your word. And, yeah, I think there are many reporters who consider an agreement of confidenitality to be an absolute, one which covers even something as heinous as sniping or serial rape. For what its worth, I think most of those reporters would also never knowingly offer confidentiality if they suspected they would become accessory to something like that...
We can't assure our sources with something like attorney-client/spousal/dr.-patient privilege (BTW, I'm not really conversant in the actual legal extent of those privileges, so this may be a bad example..I'm citing them in the context with which I'm most familiar: episodes of 'Law and Order' where they are iron clad and can be invoked anytime a defense attorney wants to piss off Sam Waterson or the writers need to develop a plot point...) All we can do is ask a source to answer questions, and agree or not agree if a person says "will you go to jail to protect me if I answer this?"
When it comes to riskier disclosures, it's not unreasonable for a source to expect a reporter be willing to invest themselves personally in that risk. And to betray that confidence once one has entered into it would be, professionally speaking, suicidal. Worse than refusing a Bill O'Reilly overature for phone sex... In the future, any potential informants would run a mile at the thought of dealing with someone who's burned a source. Frankly, they might think of the burned source, and decide not to talk to any reporters at all.
This is why I think it would be disastrous for Miller to betray her source. If she sets a precedent for doing so, or even creates the perception that reporters will turn on their sources, people on all levels with risky disclosures are less likely to make them.
Without that confidence, many vital stories might never reach the public eye, and an important bulwark against corruption would be significantly weakened.
In some cases, those stories might also be breakable by careful examination of public documents..but given the sheer volume of paperwork even a city government can turn out in a week, the task would be almost intractable without somebody going out on a limb to tell us what to look for. And in other cases, the wrongdoing may have been so well concealed that an informant is the only way it will be brought to light (I believe there have been rumors circulating recently about Iraqi casualties being offficially classified as "insurgents" for example...) or the story itself may take place in a sphere of life where paperwork isn't typically generated (corrupt police stealing drugs out of the evidence locker, as another example.)
Granted, in this case, Miller is proteccting people who may know who revealed the name of a CIA agent. I'd dearly like to see that resolved. But not if, by doing so, we make it less likely in the future that a person with evidence of corruption, or election rigging, or just some prostitute or heroin addict who wants people to know what their life really entails, feel confident that a reporter will protect them when push comes to shove and that their participation won't land them in jail.

I also don't feel that the fact of whether Miller wrote the article plays much into the defensibility of her actions. In researching it, she reached out to sources and offered them confidentiality in return for more potentially more risky disclosures. The deal was protection for information, and thats as deep as the transaction goes. Again, who would agree to talk, if there was some qualification like "Well, Scooter, if I write the article, you're in the clear...If I don't, and someone subpoenas me, you might want to start shopping around for soap on a rope."

Is Miller, as you suggest, attempting to play a role as a Washington confidante? Yeah, probably she is... the role vanity plays in reporting is sometimes disturbingly large.. but in journalism, the measure of confidence a person has in you is also of enormous importance. Occasionally you are called on to demonstrate that you are worthy of it. If Miller is, she'll go to jail. Again, I agree that by refusing to name her sources what she is doing is illegal, and if a judge feels she should serve jail time for contempt, Miller ought to abide by the sentence. She knew the risk she was taking when she offered her source confidentiality, and it's not an offer that should be made lightly.

On a more practical note, ask yourself this... if this were,say, 6 years ago, and it was a Clinton source she was protecting... If she rolled over rather than held her ground, would you be applauding her principled actions, or screaming bloody murder about how reporters are miserable, spineless, ink stained wretches who can't be trusted further than you can piss into a stiff wind?

Don't get me wrong, it would be great to see the person<s> responsible for outing Plame get their ass handed to them. And, as I think it's widely believed that it was a high-level Bush administration staffer<s> we're talking about, it would be practicallly orgasmic to see this happen before Nov. 2. But, even so, I'd hate to see it come at the cost I've described above.

by lowearthorbital on Fri Oct 15, 2004 at 01:53:06 PM EST

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