A fascinating article in Business Week about the future of the New York Times contains the following blind egotism by publisher (that's newspaper parlance for "owner") Arthur Sulzberger Jr.:
The Times also is under attack from another branch of the federal government -- the judiciary. The paper figures centrally in most of a half-dozen pending court cases that collectively pose a dire threat to the traditional journalistic practice of assuring confidentiality to whistle-blowers and other informants. In October, a federal judge ordered Judith Miller of the Times imprisoned for up to 18 months for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating the leaking of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame to conservative columnist Robert Novak. Miller, who researched the Plame affair but never wrote about it, remains free pending a review by the federal Court of Appeals in Washington.Sulzberger, who spent six years as a reporter, is outraged that journalists are being slapped with contempt charges for refusing to yield confidential sources to prosecutors. "Reporters are going to jail for doing their jobs, and that's just wrong," he says.
Also going to jail for "doing their jobs": terrorists, thieves, spies, and so forth. Oh but reporters are magical and special and shouldn't have to obey the same laws as the rest of us, like answering questions by a grand jury. After all, their pay checks are signed by Arthur Sulzberger Jr.!
(Plus, it's disingenuous of Business Week to characterize these charges as an attack by the judiciary. It's the executive branch that's prosecuting the cases in federal court; the judges are just following the laws laid out by Congress (one hopes), which contain no special rights for self-designated "journalists".)
(HT: Glenn Reynolds.)
I'm always amazed at folks who will claim that the right to bear arms is absolute but freedom of the press isn't.
If journalists can't protect sources, the press isn't free.
I think that there were also a few Nazis that got put into jail (or hung) for "doing their job."
JT: Protecting sources has nothing to do with free speech. Plus, "journalists" have no more rights than anyone else, so are you arguing that everyone should be free to refuse to speak in court and to refuse to answer grand juries?
I'm sure professional hit men are just "doing their job", too. So are pimps, I suppose.
That makes it ok if you were just "doing your job"?
Irrelevant of the question of whether journalists should be able to protect their sources... journalists aren't Nazi's, terrorists, professional hit men, pimps, thieves, or spies.
Just so we're not lumping all of those people in with journalists.
Mark: The point is that "just doing your job" is no excuse for breaking the law.
MW: Never have I declared that it was.
Micahel,
If the requirement to reveal sources were primarly related to obtaining evidence of criminal wrongdoing, I would agree with you. Unfortunately, the experience with respect to Vietnam, Watergate, etc. has shown that the government's primary interest is just as often intimidating journalists to back off from legitimate stories.
Yeah these jobs (Nazi's, terrorists, professional hit men, pimps, thieves, or spies) you will note are all illegal. Whereas journalism is not. Journalists sources should be kept secret if asked to otherwise so many people would never speak up. If the government was doing something illegal and an insider says something, how could they be protected from the government if it is true? Heck, we would almost never get anonymous tips any more to solve crimes simply because all journalists would have to give up their sources. I consider this more of a privacy issue though. Like if someone is murdered, the police do not give out the name right away out of respect for the family. I was always under the assumption that journalists were protected in this manner just as victims of violent crimes are.
One obvious problem with special protections for journalists is defining who counts as a journalist. As we're discussing this on a blog, I would think it would be obvious that we can't draw a defendable line on the smooth continuum from the New York Times to the most obscure blogger.
Trav: Uh, refusing to answer the questions of a grand jury is illegal.
BB: Well right, clearly.
I never said answering the questions of a Grand Jury was not illegal, I'm just saying that either way, if you do not allow confidentiality for sources, then you will not have as many whistle-blowers. And if you allow confidentiality for sources, then those who commit a crime and told you but asked to be annonymous would get away. Which is why if you have someone who is inbetween, like journalists, then you can have the best of both worlds. Ie journalists are supposed to be ambiguous and obviously have the motivation not to make a mistake like this on purpose, unlike the average joe, because their careers are on the line. Just my 2 cents.
Trav: What's so great about "whistle blowers" who leak classified national security information, like in the Valarie Plame case? Journalists have exactly the same rights as anyone else.
Journalists have exactly the same rights as anyone else.
But they need more, because of their profession. Hence the first amendment.
Nou: Hence the first amendment?! It makes no special recognition of journalists. Don't be silly. They don't "need" more rights than anyone else, they're just public citizens.
You are correct but not very persuasive in your approach. http://www.law.cornell.edu/topics/first_amendment.html tells me that freedom of the press only means freedom of the individual to use a printing press. I had assumed it gave some rights to the press corps.
Nou: What the heck are you talking about? I'm exactly right, accoring to that link. "Despite popular misunderstanding the right to freedom of the press guaranteed by the first amendment is not very different from the right to freedom of speech. It allows an individual to express themselves through publication and dissemination. It is part of the constitutional protection of freedom of expression. It does not afford members of the media any special rights or privileges not afforded to citizens in general."
I wasn't trying to persuade you, I was telling you an established fact. Similarly, I wouldn't persuade you that the sky is blue, I would just tell you. If you choose not to believe that's your issue.
It's not very persuasive in the fact that you make me find out for myself if the sky actually is blue, and you make fun of me for thinking that it is black (maybe I work the night shift!). So I wanted to cede your point ("You are correct") while making some small protest against the fact that you weren't very helpful and made me mad. I appreciate the attention you give to interacting with your commenters, but I don't think I'll be able to accustom myself to your confrontational, contradictory style. Any of your responses to JT, Trav, and BB in this thread would light my fuse, so I'm better off going back to boards where the kind of low-key, hand-holding arguments that JT and Trav present are the norm. The last word is yours if you want it, though; I'll check this thread again.
Nou: Sorry to be excessively confrontational, free speech is an important issue to me. You're welcome back any time!