Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Plamegate and press freedom
Already, Fitzgerald's investigation has proved a disaster for freedom of the press and freedom of information. Reporters, editors, and publishers have been put on notice about the legal risk of using blind sources, which most consider an essential tool of news-gathering. Any ambiguity about a press privilege under federal law has been resolved, not in favor of the media. According to some anecdotal accounts, journalists' failure to fully protect their sources in the Plame case has already chilled official leaks to reporters. Should Fitzgerald win convictions under the espionage law or Section 641, any conversations between officials and journalists touching on classified information could come become prosecutable offenses. That would turn the current chill into permafrost.
The publisher of the New York Times and its editorial page deserve more blame than they've gotten for demanding that former Attorney General John Ashcroft name a special prosecutor in the Plame case. In leading that charge, they failed to think through the logical consequence of the policy they were advocating, namely subpoenaing reporters who were the recipients and only witnesses to leaks from the White House. The New York Times won the great modern battle for freedom of information in the Pentagon Papers case. With the Plame case, it has provoked a no-win showdown that is likely to constrain public disclosure for years to come.
Why did the Times make this mistake, especially after criticizing the out-of-control independent counsels who went after Henry Cisneros, Bruce Babbitt, and Bill Clinton? I think that, like a lot of liberals, the Times editors imagined the Bush team to be so ruthless as to be capable of anything—even taking down a critic by wrecking his wife's career and endangering the lives of American spies abroad.
Well, yeah.
2 Comments:
By 
Cassandra, at
Wed Oct 19, 07:27:00 AM:
Independent counsels always get out of control, but that isn't even the point. For integrity's sake, once this type of thing is launched, it had to be investigated until no stone was left unturned.
Only a complete moron could have failed to see where this was going - I (and many others) pointed this out over a year and a half ago.
My husband told me the other nite that reporters are actually angry with the Times for telling Judy Miller she couldn't report on WMDs after her "failure" to be right embarrassed the paper.
I found that almost unbearably funny. They really are incredibly arrogant - the press truly believe they owe no duty to anyone: not to their employers (who, after all, pay them), not to their public (to get the story right), not to society (not to damage national security by interfering with investigations or by leaking classified info).
No one -- NO ONE -- can interfere with their absolute right to go anywhere and say anything they feel like saying.
Amazing. Don't know if you read Scott Ott's satire the other day about blogging operations at the NYT, but he nailed it. Something to the effect of:
"the critical distinction between bloggers and so-called professional journalists is that bloggers lack editorial oversight"
In other words... there is no difference. Truer words...
By Jane Bellwether, at
Wed Oct 19, 05:32:00 PM:
Me? I'm not worried about reporters losing sources. In my opinion, Watergate is a fiasco because of the sad belief that it was a victory for the people. Deep Throat should have gone through the proper law enforcement channels, which would have protected his identity, if he were so concerned about wrongdoing. But that's scoring political points the hard way, rather than maintaining one's high perch while felling one's enemies.
As a journalist, I don't support anonymous sources. Either you have facts and information that can be verified and then you go to print, or you have a problem that should probably be handled through some other venue and has no place presenting itself as anything other than speculation.
