Judith Miller Jailed
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Bad Decisions, General Politics, WarThis story comes from, oddly enough, the NY Times:
The judge, Thomas F. Hogan of Federal District Court in Washington, rejected a request by Ms. Miller and her lawyers that she be allowed to serve her detention at home or in Connecticut or elsewhere, and ordered that she be put in custody and taken to a jail in the District of Columbia area until October, or until she changed her mind about testifying.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 agree with her wholeheartedly, but only in cases where you’re talking about a whistleblower.
Right now, Judith is protecting the powerful and that simply isn’t right. At a certain point your job as a journalist and your responsibility to society as a whole come in conflict. We’re talking about a serious crime being committed quite possibly for no other reason than to discredit a man and endanger the life of his wife.
Where is the justice in that?
UPDATE: 7:00 p.m. CMT
Looks like Cooper will testify after all. His source told him he could. Hmm…
And Glenn Reynolds has a great post over on Instapundit showing Time’s editor-in-chief saying that journalists are not above the law.
The only protection that might help is an absolute shield, akin to the attorney-client or doctor-patient privilege. But as University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey Stone notes, even those have exceptions. If a client asks his lawyer how to get away with robbing a bank, the conversation is not protected because the privilege was never meant to facilitate violations of the law.The sort of privilege sought by the news media, however, would do just that. Reporters who are witnesses to a crime could evade the normal duty of citizens to tell what they know.
Journalists like nothing better than exposing self-seeking behavior by special interests who care nothing for the public good. In this case, they can find it by looking in the mirror.
I couldn’t agree more.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 6th, 2005 and is filed under Bad Decisions, General Politics, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
