The government threat to journalistic privilege is now as great as it has been since the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press began its annual Homefront Confidential report six years ago. The report, which studies how the war on terrorism has affected access to information, rates several categories according to a scale that mimics the color-coded threat level of the Department of Homeland...
NEW YORK (AP): What do you call people who have been driven from their homes with only the clothes on their backs, unsure if they will ever be able to return, and forced to build a new life in a strange place? News organizations are struggling for the right word. Many, including The Associated Press, have used "refugee" to describe those displaced by the wrath of Hurricane Katrina. But the choice...
Judith Miller of the New York Times first came to my attention through her book - God has ninety nine names. I did not like it. In it she displayed her pro-Israeli, pro-Phalangist (a fascist Lebanese organization) bias against the uprooted Palestinians. She disregarded facts, and preferred quoting endless talks to justify the marauding activities of the Israeli apartheid government and the U.S...
When George Freeman, assistant general counsel for the New York Times, makes his way to his office at the Times' Manhattan headquarters, his colleagues usually raise the same topic of conversation: Judy Miller. As one of the attorneys working on Miller's behalf, Freeman says his co-workers are never-ending in their curiosity about the case. "People ask me about it every day, on the elevator...
NEW YORK The board of The American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) has voted unanimously to not endorse an earlier decision to give a Conscience in Media award to jailed New York Times reporter Judith Miller, E&P has learned. The group's First Amendment committee had narrowly voted to give Miller the prize for her dedication to protecting sources, but the full board has now voted to not...
In May, 500 members of the media elite rose to their feet to applaud a First Amendment award the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press gave to lawyer Floyd Abrams. Jointly presenting the award at a gala dinner in Manhattan were Matthew Cooper of Time magazine and Judith Miller of the New York Times. For a year, Mr. Abrams had worked to fend off a special prosecutor seeking testimony about...
Judith Miller, the New York Times, and some members of Congress picked a bad time to make a stand for journalistic integrity. Miller, a Times reporter, is in jail for not revealing the identity of a White House source in an article (never published) about CIA operative Valerie Plame, whose husband is a vocal critic of the Iraq War. The Times has stood behind Miller, declaring that the relationship...
Something doesn't add up about why Judith Miller went to jail. The New York Times reporter didn't write a story about the Valerie Plame case and had a waiver from her source in order to talk about it to the grand jury. But she insisted on going to jail anyway. Speculation is mounting that Miller is protecting herself─that Miller was herself a source of information about Plame that made it to...
Press freedom in the United States was dealt a blow last week with the Supreme Court's refusal to hear an appeal by two journalists who face jail for refusing to reveal their confidential sources and ignoring subpoenas to testify before a grand jury. The decision has several IFEX members concerned that the decision gives authoritarian regimes further ammunition to justify crackdowns on the press....
Media types desperate for a sliver of encouraging news about public support can grasp it in the latest State of the First Amendment survey's findings about unnamed sources. The 2005 edition of the poll, commissioned by the First Amendment Center in collaboration with AJR, found that 69 percent of Americans agree with the statement: "Journalists should be allowed to keep a news source confidential...
