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...
Judith Miller is an American hero. Forget Ahmed Chalabi and all of those off-target stories about Saddam's WMD. When crunch time came, Miller hung tough. Not for her the cave-in of Time Inc. honcho Norm Pearlstine, who gave up Time reporter Matt Cooper's notes. Not for her the last-minute "waiver" route that Cooper took in deciding to testify before the grand jury investigating who leaked the...
WASHINGTON -- Attention, fellow journalists: Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has blown our cover. In his argument for why New York Times reporter Judith Miller should be jailed until she tells a grand jury who revealed the name of a CIA operative to her, Fitzgerald stated that "journalists are not entitled to promise complete confidentiality. No one in America is." He's right. But what's...
Just about every week, the phone rings with an earnest, young journalism student at the other end asking what he or she needs to do to become a reporter. Some have already given it a great deal of thought. Most have not. For a while now, I've toyed with the notion of one day writing a book, a kind of road map for would-be reporters on some of the obstacles ahead. I'm not sure what I'd call it...
There are no bars in the 70-square-foot cell that Judith Miller, the New York Times reporter, is expected to call home for the next four months or so, as she serves her contempt-of-court sentence in the Alexandria Detention Center in Virginia. But though the jail has a reputation among lawyers and corrections officials as a relatively progressive institution, Ms. Miller indicated to her lawyers...
This is a proud but awful moment for The New York Times and its employees. One of our reporters, Judith Miller, has decided to accept a jail sentence rather than testify before a grand jury about one of her confidential sources. Ms. Miller has taken a path that will be lonely and painful for her and her family and friends. We wish she did not have to choose it, but we are certain she did the right...
Republican Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana, who is usually a reliable conservative, is promoting a "federal shield law" for reporters. It has gotten some publicity in the wake of attempts by a Special Counsel to force reporters Matt Cooper of Time magazine and Judith Miller of the New York Times to reveal their "confidential" and anonymous sources in the case of CIA operative Valerie Plame, whose...
The International Federation of Journalists today accused Time-Warner, one of the world’s largest media corporations of a "profound betrayal" of principle over its decision to publicly defy its reporter’s wishes and hand over his notebook to avoid heavy fines in a court action over protection of sources. Matthew Cooper, a reporter for Time magazine was ready to go to jail for refusing to name a...
Washington, June 30, 2005–Restrictive regimes around the world came out ahead. Many were already taking a cue from a U.S. case involving the leak of a CIA officer's name when the Supreme Court announced this week that it would not hear an appeal by two journalists. The reporters, Matthew Cooper of Time magazine and Judith Miller of The New York Times, face 18-month jail terms for not revealing...
Philip Meyer, who has studied the newspaper industry for three decades, can see the darkness at the end of the tunnel. If present readership trends continue indefinitely, says the University of North Carolina professor, the last daily newspaper reader will check out in 2044. October 2044, to be exact. "I use that as an attention-getting device," says Meyer, whose latest book, "The Vanishing...
