Judy Miller - You deserve it

Manifesto

Well, Judy Miller is in jail and I couldn't be happier. Now some readers of this blog may wonder how in the hell I can reconcile my belief in a free press that reports on the important news of the day and the jailing of a reporter who refuses to name a confidential source used in an article. Am I letting my personal political biases get in the way of my ideals? Am I just as bad as the corrupt politicians I'm always ranting about? I don't think so. And I don't think it is a stretch at all.

Atrios has been pointing this out for months and today he linked to an article in the Philly Daily news that expresses many of my sentiments.

That is why the ability of reporters to keep the identity of their true sources confidential is protected by shield laws in 31 states and the District of Columbia (although not in federal courts). Without such protections, the government official would not be able to report the wrongdoing of a president (remember "Deep Throat," the ultimate confidential source?), nor would the corporate executive feel free to rat out a crooked CEO. The comfortable and corrupt could not be afflicted.

But the Times' Judy Miller has not been afflicting the comfortable. She has been protecting them, advancing their objectives, and helping them to mislead a now very afflicted American public. In fact, thinking again about Watergate and Deep Throat is a good way to understand why Judy Miller should not be protected today. Because in Watergate, a reporter acting like Miller would not be meeting the FBI's Mark Felt in an underground parking garage. She would be obsessively on the phone with H.R. Haldeman or John Dean, listening to malicious gossip about Carl Bernstein or their plans to make Judge Sirica look bad.

This is what is so absolutely troubling about this case. Somebody in D.C. told Judy Miller dirt hoping to settle a score against Joe Wilson. Miller, acting as stenographer, then went and printed the article (admittedly only after Bob Novak). It turns out the smear happens to be a major crime. It is also likely that the person doing the talking knew it was a crime. That would explain why they remained anonymous and told Miller, et al. Now Miller wants to protect this source, who likely only told her the tip anonymously because to do so with his name attached would be a serious crime.

Here is a situation that perfectly captures the current state of the laziness of the American media. Here you have a person smart enough to understand the media and the importance that it places on "access" to top-level sources, especially in a government as secretive as the current one. That person used the media to smear a critic of the government, knowing that, once done, the official could hide behind anonymity and that the reporters would keep his secret if they wanted continued "access." This isn't the purpose of the protection for reporters. But whoever the leaker was knew the way the media protects this privilege and protects its own, and tried to use that to his own advantage. He shouldn't be allowed to get away with it, and the media should be embarrassed for trying to help him do so.

But reporters all talk about the slippery slope. They say "sometimes it is a crime to reveal information that the public needs to know, so this protection is needed to encourage sources to talk to the press." I couldn't agree more. But I've never been one for slippery slope arguments, because everything is subject to a slippery slope argument. It is what people who disagree with you use when they are out of ways to support their argument. Why no gay marriage? Because it is a slippery slope to bestiality. (A real argument put forward by Sen. Santorum, and repeated by people who know better.) Why no legalized pot? Because it is a slippery slope to legalizing every other drug. These arguments are usually pointless and worthless. In most, if not all cases, there are distinctions that make a serious difference that can be made. The slipperly slope argument usually relies on ignoring that there are any distinctions between anything.

And that is the important part of this story. The media is ignoring the distinction between using an anonymous source to support the public interest, and doing so to settle a personal score. The important part about this story is the public interest. Some reporter who supports Miller needs to explain to me what part of the public interest was served when the anonymous source in D.C. told Miller et al that Valerie Plame was a CIA agent? That is an important part of the standard.

And if you ask me who decides what is in the "public interest", I tell you that each reporter decides, and the public gets to decide if the reporter is ultimately subjected to jail time. Reporters have always had to weigh the pros and cons of using anonymous sources. Judy Miller did and does so here, and her judgment is as bad as her reporting on WMDs in Iraq.