(still no Justice, why isn't Robert Novak in Jail?)
The New York Times
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 29, 2005
Journalism suffered a harmful setback when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review the case of two reporters who have been threatened with jail for declining to reveal their sources. The reporters had been questioned by a grand jury investigating the unmasking of an undercover CIA officer whose husband had run afoul of the Bush administration.
It can be a crime for a federal official to knowingly reveal the identity of a covert agent. Yet somehow the case evolved to focus on the reporters, who did nothing wrong. Now that the Supreme Court has refused to consider the case, the reporters face up to 18 months in jail for refusing to reveal their confidential sources to a grand jury.
One of the reporters, Judith Miller of The New York Times, never wrote an article about the case. Still, Miller faces jail along with Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, who did write about the agent, Valerie Plame, but focused on the motivations that may have lain behind her unmasking.
The government has every right to investigate whether a crime might have been committed. But in the process, it has done more harm than good when the prosecutor inexplicably switched gears and began threatening to punish Miller and Cooper for declining to reveal their sources.
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http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/06/28/opinion/edjournalist.php>
(more at link above)