Comm Law and Ethics 400

WHY JOURNALISTS HAVE A DUTY TO PROTECT SOURCES

By Bill Kovarik — 07/06/05

A federal court sent New York Times reporter Judith Miller to jail today. She refused to reveal her source for a leak about the Valerie Plame affair.

“If journalists cannot be trusted to guarantee confidentiality, then journalists cannot function and there cannot be a free press,” she told the court a few minutes before they led her away.

The federal prosecutor, Patrick A. Fitzgerald, said Miller was placing herself above the law and threatened criminal as well as civil contempt charges.

The absurdity of the situation — after all, Miller did not publish the information she supposedly received — is beside the point. And the Bush administration has no doubt forgotten by now just how much flak Miller took for them in the run-up to the Iraq war. Critics of the war wish that she, in particular, had been less guillible. Its a mark of just how alienated Bush is from the press that his administration can no longer distinguish friends from enemies.

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