Welcome to the Party, NYTimes

[Guest MikeSC]

A Victory for Press Freedom

 

Published: February 26, 2005

 

In a welcome ruling for this newspaper, and the larger cause of robust journalism and government accountability, a federal judge in New York has barred a federal prosecutor's ill-conceived effort to get the phone records of two Times reporters from the fall of 2001 in order to discover the identity of their confidential sources. To justify this intrusive fishing expedition, which could reveal hundreds of communications with confidential sources, the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, the United States attorney in Chicago, had argued that the records were needed for a grand jury's investigation of government misconduct in the disclosure of impending government actions against two Islamic charities.

 

The judge, Robert Sweet, reasoned, correctly, that the subpoenas for the phone records were the functional equivalent of demanding testimony from the reporters themselves, and he took note of the important role of confidential sources in news investigations of the Watergate, Iran-contra, Monica Lewinsky and Abu Ghraib scandals. He explained that the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York recognized a qualified First Amendment privilege that protects reporters from being compelled to disclose their confidential sources. And he said Mr. Fitzgerald had not shown that the information he sought was critical and could not be gotten elsewhere. "The reporters at issue relied upon the promise of confidentiality to gather information concerning issues of paramount national importance," Judge Sweet wrote, referring to Judith Miller and Philip Shenon of The Times. "The government has failed to demonstrate that the balance of competing interests weighs in its favor."

 

Judge Sweet's finding of broad protections for reporters facing grand jury subpoenas stands as a refreshing contrast with last week's chilling decision by a three-judge appellate panel in Washington. That panel found no such protection for members of the press in another case involving Mr. Fitzgerald and Ms. Miller: a grand jury's investigation into the disclosure of the identity of an undercover C.I.A. officer, Valerie Plame. The Washington appeals court ruling raised the prospect that Ms. Miller and Matthew Cooper, of Time magazine, could be jailed for up to 18 months for refusing to testify before a different grand jury. That situation cries out for a rehearing by the full appellate bench and, ultimately, Supreme Court review, especially in light of the contrary New York ruling.

 

Meanwhile, an even more basic issue has been raised in recent articles in The Washington Post and elsewhere: the real possibility that the disclosure of Ms. Plame's identity, while an abuse of power, may not have violated any law. Before any reporters are jailed, searching court review is needed to determine whether the facts indeed support a criminal prosecution under existing provisions of the law protecting the identities of covert operatives. Some judge may have looked at the issue, but we have no way of knowing, given the bizarre level of secrecy that still prevents the reporters being threatened with jail from seeing the nine-page blanked-out portion of last week's decision evaluating the evidence.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/26/opinion/...ner=rssuserland

Gee, somebody around here has been saying this for a while now.

 

And it only took journalists risking jail time for the press to finally ask if a crime actually was committed.

-=Mike

[Guest Wildbomb 4:20]

Mike, were you honestly expecting any better?

 

I'm probably going to come out and sound brash, but honestly, the press fucks this up more than ever these days. We're given a bit of leeway on the subject of national defense and the rest (oh, thank you NY Times v Sullivan and NY Times v US) but that's another story for another day.

 

Essentially: yeah, they probably should have wondered whether or not it was a crime to begin with. But you know what? It's not just about what's newsworthy, Mike. It's also about what SELLS. And if they screw something up, they're not really accountable for it. Don't come crying about libel in this one. You can't prove they maliciously and knowingly fucked this one over.

 

And don't go ahead and say it had political motivation, either. They fuck this up no matter who's in office.

 

--Ryan

*sigh* yeah, I'm a journalist too...great group I'm joining, huh?...