| Topic: |
Science > Abortion |
| User: |
"james g. keegan jr." |
| Date: |
08 Jul 2005 09:39:52 AM |
| Object: |
Judith Miller Goes to Jail |
Judith Miller Goes to Jail
This is a proud but awful moment for The New York Times and its
employees. One of our reporters, Judith Miller, has decided to accept a
jail sentence rather than testify before a grand jury about one of her
confidential sources. Ms. Miller has taken a path that will be lonely and
painful for her and her family and friends. We wish she did not have to
choose it, but we are certain she did the right thing.
She is surrendering her liberty in defense of a greater liberty, granted
to a free press by the founding fathers so journalists can work on behalf
of the public without fear of regulation or retaliation from any branch
of government.
The Press and the Law
Some people - including, sadly, some of our colleagues in the news media
- have mistakenly assumed that a reporter and a news organization place
themselves above the law by rejecting a court order to testify. Nothing
could be further from the truth. When another Times reporter, M. A.
Farber, went to jail in 1978 rather than release his confidential notes,
he declared, "I have no such right and I seek none."
By accepting her sentence, Ms. Miller bowed to the authority of the
court. But she acted in the great tradition of civil disobedience that
began with this nation's founding, which holds that the common good is
best served in some instances by private citizens who are willing to defy
a legal, but unjust or unwise, order.
This tradition stretches from the Boston Tea Party to the Underground
Railroad, to the Americans who defied the McCarthy inquisitions and to
the civil rights movement. It has called forth ordinary citizens, like
Rosa Parks; government officials, like Daniel Ellsberg and Mark Felt; and
statesmen, like Martin Luther King. Frequently, it falls to news
organizations to uphold this tradition. As Justice William O. Douglas
wrote in 1972, "The press has a preferred position in our constitutional
scheme, not to enable it to make money, not to set newsmen apart as a
favored class, but to bring to fulfillment the public's right to know."
Critics point out that even presidents must bow to the Supreme Court. But
presidents are agents of the government, sworn to enforce the law.
Journalists are private citizens, and Ms. Miller's actions are faithful
to the Constitution. She is defending the right of Americans to get vital
information from news organizations that need not fear government
retaliation - an imperative defended by the 49 states that recognize a
reporter's right to protect sources.
A second reporter facing a possible jail term, Matthew Cooper of Time
magazine, agreed yesterday to testify before the grand jury. Last week,
Time decided, over Mr. Cooper's protests, to release documents demanded
by the judge that revealed his confidential sources. We were deeply
disappointed by that decision.
We do not see how a newspaper, magazine or television station can support
a reporter's decision to protect confidential sources even if the
potential price is lost liberty, and then hand over the notes or
documents that make the reporter's sacrifice meaningless. The point of
this struggle is to make sure that people with critical information can
feel confident that if they speak to a reporter on the condition of
anonymity, their identities will be protected. No journalist's promise
will be worth much if the employer that stands behind him or her is
prepared to undercut such a vow of secrecy.
Protecting a Reporter's Sources
Most readers understand a reporter's need to guarantee confidentiality to
a source. Before he went to jail, Mr. Farber told the court that if he
gave up documents that revealed the names of the people he had promised
anonymity, "I will have given notice that the nation's premier newspaper
is no longer available to those men and women who would seek it out - or
who would respond to it - to talk freely and without fear."
While The Times has gone to great lengths lately to make sure that the
use of anonymous sources is limited, there is no way to eliminate them.
The most important articles tend to be the ones that upset people in high
places, and many could not be reported if those who risked their jobs or
even their liberty to talk to reporters knew that they might be
identified the next day. In the larger sense, revealing government
wrongdoing advances the rule of law, especially at a time of increased
government secrecy.
It is for these reasons that most states have shield laws that protect
reporters' rights to conceal their sources. Those laws need to be
reviewed and strengthened, even as members of Congress continue to work
to pass a federal shield law. But at this moment, there is no statute
that protects Judith Miller when she defies a federal trial judge's order
to reveal who told her what about Valerie Plame Wilson's identity as an
undercover C.I.A. operative.
Ms. Miller understands this perfectly, and she accepts the consequences
with full respect for the court. We hope that her sacrifice will alert
the nation to the need to protect the basic tools reporters use in doing
their most critical work.
To be frank, this is far from an ideal case. We would not have wanted our
reporter to give up her liberty over a situation whose details are so
complicated and muddy. But history is very seldom kind enough to provide
the ideal venue for a principled stand. Ms. Miller is going to jail over
an article that she never wrote, yet she has been unwavering in her
determination to protect the people with whom she had spoken on the
promise of confidentiality.
The Plame Story
The case involves an article by the syndicated columnist Robert Novak,
who revealed that Joseph Wilson, a retired career diplomat, was married
to an undercover C.I.A. officer Mr. Novak identified by using her maiden
name, Valerie Plame. Mr. Wilson had been asked by the C.I.A. to
investigate whether Saddam Hussein in Iraq was trying to buy uranium from
Niger that could be used for making nuclear weapons. Mr. Wilson found no
evidence of that, and he later wrote an Op-Ed article for The Times
saying he believed that the Bush administration had misrepresented the
facts.
It seemed very possible that someone at the White House had told Mr.
Novak about Ms. Plame to undermine Mr. Wilson's credibility and send a
chilling signal to other officials who might be inclined to speak out
against the administration's Iraq policy. At the time, this page said
that if those were indeed the circumstances, the leak had been "an
egregious abuse of power." We urged the Justice Department to
investigate. But we warned then that the inquiry should not degenerate
into an attempt to compel journalists to reveal their sources.
We mainly had Mr. Novak in mind then, but Mr. Novak remains both free and
mum about what he has or has not told the grand jury looking into the
leak. Like almost everyone, we are baffled by his public posture. All we
know now is that Mr. Novak - who early on expressed the opinion that no
journalists who bowed to court pressure to betray sources could hold up
their heads in Washington - has offered no public support to the
colleague who is going to jail while he remains at liberty.
Ms. Miller did not write an article about Ms. Plame, but the prosecutor,
Patrick Fitzgerald, wants to know whether anyone in government told her
about Mr. Wilson's wife and her secret job. The inquiry has been
conducted with such secrecy that it is hard to know exactly what Mr.
Fitzgerald thinks Ms. Miller can tell him, or what argument he offered to
convince the court that his need to hear her testimony outweighs the
First Amendment.
What we do know is that if Ms. Miller testifies, it may be immeasurably
harder in the future to persuade a frightened government employee to talk
about malfeasance in high places, or a worried worker to reveal corporate
crimes. The shroud of secrecy thrown over this case by the prosecutor and
the judge, an egregious denial of due process, only makes it more urgent
to take a stand.
Mr. Fitzgerald drove that point home chillingly when he said the
authorities "can't have 50,000 journalists" making decisions about
whether to reveal sources' names and that the government had a right to
impose its judgment. But that's not what the founders had in mind in
writing the First Amendment. In 1971, our colleague James Reston cited
James Madison's admonition about a free press in explaining why The Times
had first defied the Nixon administration's demand to stop publishing the
Pentagon Papers and then fought a court's order to cease publication.
"Among those principles deemed sacred in America," Madison wrote, "among
those sacred rights considered as forming the bulwark of their liberty,
which the government contemplates with awful reverence and would approach
only with the most cautious circumspection, there is no one of which the
importance is more deeply impressed on the public mind than the liberty
of the press."
Mr. Fitzgerald's attempts to interfere with the rights of a free press
while refusing to disclose his reasons for doing so, when he can't even
say whether a crime has been committed, have exhibited neither reverence
nor cautious circumspection. It would compound the tragedy if his actions
emboldened more prosecutors to trample on a free press.
Our Bottom Line
Responsible journalists recognize that press freedoms are not absolute
and must be exercised responsibly. This newspaper will not, for example,
print the details of American troop movements in advance of a battle,
because publication would endanger lives and national security. But these
limits cannot be dictated by the whim of a branch of government,
especially behind a screen of secrecy.
Indeed, the founders warned against any attempt to have the government
set limits on a free press, under any conditions. "However desirable
those measures might be which might correct without enslaving the press,
they have never yet been devised in America," Madison wrote.
Journalists talk about these issues a great deal, and they can seem
abstract. The test comes when a colleague is being marched off to jail
for doing nothing more than the job our readers expected of her, and of
the rest of us. The Times has been in these fights before, beginning in
1857, when a journalist named J. W. Simonton wrote an editorial about
bribery in Congress and was held in contempt by the House of
Representatives for 19 days when he refused to reveal his sources. In the
end, Mr. Simonton kept faith, and the corrupt congressmen resigned. All
of our battles have not had equally happy endings. But each time, whether
we win or we lose, we remain convinced that the public wins in the long
run and that what is at stake is nothing less than our society's
perpetual bottom line: the citizens control the government in a
democracy.
We stand with Ms. Miller and thank her for taking on that fight for the
rest of us.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/07/opinion/07thu1.html?ex=1278388800&en=
31f40ba746f82de9&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
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| User: "BadPony" |
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| Title: Re: Judith Miller Goes to Jail |
08 Jul 2005 10:32:40 AM |
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james g. keegan jr. wrote:
Judith Miller Goes to Jail
This is a proud but awful moment for The New York Times and its
employees. One of our reporters, Judith Miller, has decided to accept a
jail sentence rather than testify before a grand jury about one of her
confidential sources. Ms. Miller has taken a path that will be lonely and
painful for her and her family and friends. We wish she did not have to
choose it, but we are certain she did the right thing.
What a load of twaddle. She has no moral high ground and
was part of a political conspiracy that put Valerie Plame
and her family's lives in danger of kidnapping, torture
and murder. She should go to jail until she testifies
instead of trying to protect her Neocon friends.
.
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| User: "Paul Anderson" |
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| Title: Re: Judith Miller Goes to Jail |
08 Jul 2005 01:10:53 PM |
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On Fri, 08 Jul 2005 11:32:40 -0400, BadPony <wanderer@dev.null.com>
wrote:
james g. keegan jr. wrote:
Judith Miller Goes to Jail
This is a proud but awful moment for The New York Times and its
employees. One of our reporters, Judith Miller, has decided to accept a
jail sentence rather than testify before a grand jury about one of her
confidential sources. Ms. Miller has taken a path that will be lonely and
painful for her and her family and friends. We wish she did not have to
choose it, but we are certain she did the right thing.
What a load of twaddle. She has no moral high ground and
was part of a political conspiracy that put Valerie Plame
and her family's lives in danger of kidnapping, torture
and murder. She should go to jail until she testifies
instead of trying to protect her Neocon friends.
Just because you have no principles does not mean others should also
take the easy way out.
.
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| User: "Galen Hekhuis" |
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| Title: Re: Judith Miller Goes to Jail |
08 Jul 2005 01:36:32 PM |
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On Fri, 08 Jul 2005 18:10:53 GMT, (Paul Anderson)
wrote:
On Fri, 08 Jul 2005 11:32:40 -0400, BadPony <wanderer@dev.null.com>
wrote:
james g. keegan jr. wrote:
Judith Miller Goes to Jail
This is a proud but awful moment for The New York Times and its
employees. One of our reporters, Judith Miller, has decided to accept a
jail sentence rather than testify before a grand jury about one of her
confidential sources. Ms. Miller has taken a path that will be lonely and
painful for her and her family and friends. We wish she did not have to
choose it, but we are certain she did the right thing.
What a load of twaddle. She has no moral high ground and
was part of a political conspiracy that put Valerie Plame
and her family's lives in danger of kidnapping, torture
and murder. She should go to jail until she testifies
instead of trying to protect her Neocon friends.
Just because you have no principles does not mean others should also
take the easy way out.
I have heard speculation that her refusal to testify etc. stems more from
her desire to hide the depth of her involvement in events leading up to the
war in Iraq (remember she was a great cheerleader for the existence of WMD
and the eventual invasion of Iraq) than it does any concern she might have
about protecting her sources. I agree with "BadPony" that she should go
to jail, but rather for her crimes, not for a refusal to name sources.
Galen Hekhuis NpD, JFR, GWA
Illiterate? Write for FREE help
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| User: "BadPony" |
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| Title: Re: Judith Miller Goes to Jail |
08 Jul 2005 01:20:35 PM |
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Paul Anderson wrote:
On Fri, 08 Jul 2005 11:32:40 -0400, BadPony <wanderer@dev.null.com>
wrote:
james g. keegan jr. wrote:
Judith Miller Goes to Jail
This is a proud but awful moment for The New York Times and its
employees. One of our reporters, Judith Miller, has decided to accept a
jail sentence rather than testify before a grand jury about one of her
confidential sources. Ms. Miller has taken a path that will be lonely and
painful for her and her family and friends. We wish she did not have to
choose it, but we are certain she did the right thing.
What a load of twaddle. She has no moral high ground and
was part of a political conspiracy that put Valerie Plame
and her family's lives in danger of kidnapping, torture
and murder. She should go to jail until she testifies
instead of trying to protect her Neocon friends.
Just because you have no principles does not mean others should also
take the easy way out.
I think you are confusing principles with political fanaticism.
She has NO moral high ground, and should be in jail along with
all those who conspired with her. She's a traitor to the USA
and tried to promote a neocon agenda to invade Iraq for Israel.
It's plain for all to see whose side she's on and it AIN'T the USA's.
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| User: "james g. keegan jr." |
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| Title: Re: Judith Miller Goes to Jail |
08 Jul 2005 01:30:32 PM |
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BadPony <wanderer@dev.null.com> wrote in
news:3audnT2siLklWFPfRVn-pQ@comcast.com:
I think you are confusing principles with political fanaticism.
She has NO moral high ground, and should be in jail along with
all those who conspired with her. She's a traitor to the USA
she is not the traitor, you imbicile. the traitor is is the bush
administration official who was willing to out a cia operative and risk the
lives of thousands in a vendetta against that operative's spouse.
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