How can a journalist be jailed for refusing to reveal sources for a story she didn't write? There's a message in today's jailing of New York Times correspondent Judith Miller, but it's not the one that judges and prosecutors claim to be delivering.
The twists and turns the Plame affair have an almost Kafkaesque quality about them. A nationally known journalist cites two Bush administration sources in revealing Plame, wife of an administration critic, to be a CIA operative. Trouble is, outing undercover operatives is against the law. And, as we keep being reminded, journalists aren't above the law, so now Miller has been thrown in jail. That's in spite of the fact that she is not the journalist who outed Plame -- she never wrote about it at all.
The red-vs-blue political issues are sufficiently entangled in this case as to make all parties at least a bit suspect. Why is Robert Novak, the journalist who originally revealed Plame's CIA connection, not the one in jail? Why does the prosecutor want to punish Miller when she has yet to use whatever information her sources provided her? Will we ever know the whole truth about this whole affair? How will we even know the truth when we hear it, seeing as how journalists pursuing further revelations in this story could themselves presumably wind up in jail without writing a word?
In the context of EULA-based censorship clauses and Apple's blog-bashing lawsuits, we've had a number of discussions here about First Amendment issues. And it always startles me to see how many people feel there should be more restraints placed on the press. Well, for those who feel that way, congratulations, because I think you've gotten your wish.
The message here is not that the press isn't above the law. (After all, just for one thing, to this point it looks like Robert Novak is.) The real message for journalists, for their sources, and for their readers is that the quaint old notion of a free press has just had another very big nail driven into its coffin.
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