I know I’m a little late on this one, but Salon’s Imperfect Martyr piece from the other day was complete bullshit. Andrew O’Hehir draws a false analogy between Judy Miller’s jailing and the ACLU defending Nazis, claims that the majority of liberals favor her jailing because of residual anger over the Iraq war^{[1]I want to see Miller punished for her misinformation laundering as much as the next guy, but the reason she belongs in jail right now have nothing to do with that.}, and wraps himself in the first amendment so tightly that he’s in danger of suffocating. And I haven’t even mentioned how patronizing and self-righteous it is…

The antidote to these “If you disagree with me, you hate the bill of rights” slurs can be found in three great articles from this week. First is this piece that Sid Blumenthal wrote for Salon :

In the best-case scenario for Miller, Bill Kovach believes that any pledge she may have made to a source should be invalid. Kovach is the former Washington bureau chief of the New York Times, former curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University and founding director of the Committee of Concerned Journalists. He describes the internal policy set within the Times on sources. “By the 1980s, we decided that we had to set some limits because reporters had been misled and the credibility of the news reports had been damaged by misleading sources. When I was chief of the bureau in Washington, we laid down a rule to the reporters that when they wanted to establish anonymity they had to lay out ground rules that if anything the source said was damaging, false or damaged the credibility of the newspaper we would identify them.”

In the Plame matter, Kovach sees no obligation of the reporters to false sources. “If a man damages your credibility, why not lay the blame where it belongs? If Plame were an operative, she wouldn’t have the authority to send someone. Whoever was leaking that information to Novak, Cooper or Judy Miller was doing it with malice aforethought, trying to set up a deceptive circumstance. That would invalidate any promise of confidentiality. You wouldn’t protect a source for telling lies or using you to mislead your audience. That changes everything. Any reporter that puts themselves or a news organization in that position is making a big mistake.”

Next up is this mea culpa^{[2]Latin for “my bad”.} from Robert Kuttner :

After a week’s reporting and reflection, I also suggest a different view of press privilege and the public interest. In the Alice in Wonderland world of the Plame-Rove story, Judith Miller, who worked hand in glove with the Bush administration to publish bogus stories about Saddam Hussein’s alleged nuclear program, is a hero – for going to jail to protect, once again, her friends in the administration.

And Time-Warner, which turned over Matt Cooper’s notes (for the wrong reasons – Time-Warner’s corporate interests – but that’s another story) is the villain. Yet it may be Cooper’s testimony that finally sinks Rove. So who’s the hero and what’s the public interest?

As Michael Kinsley has observed, not all leaks are created morally equal. It’s one thing for reporters to protect a brave whistle-blower who has taken personal risks to serve the public interest. It is another thing for reporters to collude with the powerful to punish the whistle-blower, in this case Joseph Wilson, and his wife, an innocent bystander.

Is the public good served by helping Fitzgerald learn who at the White House broke the law? Or is it served by having reporters protect Karl Rove? We need a public interest test, not an absolute privilege.

This quaint and outdated talk about reporters serving the public interest segues nicely into the third, and best, article from Jacob Weisberg at Slate :

Journalists make a fetish of anonymous sources. They do so for reasons ethical, psychological, and anthropological, including genuine principle, the lure of heroism, and—especially in Washington—a culture of status based on access to inside information.

But let’s ignore the ulterior motives and focus on the principle Judith Miller has so forcefully asserted by going to prison. To Miller and the Times, confidentiality is the trump value of journalism, one that outweighs all other considerations, including obedience to the law, the public interest, and perhaps even loyalty to country.

This is indeed a strong principle, but it is a misguided one. In the Mafia, keeping confidences is the supreme value. In journalism, the highest value is the discovery and publication of the truth. When this paramount value comes into conflict with others—such as following the law, keeping your word, and so on—hard choices have to be made.

There was an episode of Murphy Brown about fifteen years ago called “Subpoena Envy” in which Candice Bergen’s character refused to appear before a grand jury. As she was awaiting her jail sentence, her trepidation about doing time was overwhelmed by the congratulations she received from her fellow reporters. That’s exactly what Judy Miller is going through now. Sure, a few months in jail sucks, but it’s a small price to pay to get the journalistic equivalent of canonization. She’s probably so drunk with glory, I doubt she’d even recognize the real issues that are at stake in this case.

What is the role of a reporter? When the leak initially occurred, Robert Novak’s defenders were quick to say that a reporter’s job is to “reveal the truth” and that anyone who questioned this didn’t understand the value of a free press. Now that the exploits of Cooper and Miller have taken the spotlight, the utmost concern is for the confidentiality of anonymous sources. From where I’m sitting, there’s not enough room on the journalistic soapbox for both of these contradictory (in this case) notions. You either stand for protecting the public interest by revealing the inner workings of our government or you stand for protecting anonymous traitors.