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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Menu Guide Wedding Weather Subscribe Contact Us June 28, 2005 Bill of Rights takes hit from Supreme sidestep The Supreme Court Monday refused to hear an appeal by two journalists who are being held in contempt for refusing to disclose the identities of confidential sources to a federal grand jury investigating the disclosure of a CIA operative's name, which is a federal crime. The two reporters, Judith Miller of The New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine face an 18-month jail sentence unless they share the names of their sources with Chicago U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who is the special prosecutor for the case. As it turns out, neither reporter disclosed CIA agent Valerie Plame's name: Miller did research for a possible story on the disclosure and Cooper wrote about the disclosure after the fact. Plame was identified in 2003 by conservative columnist Robert Novak, who cited two unidentified senior White House officials as his sources; Novak has never been called to testify before the grand jury. It is not known if he cooperated with the investigation. U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan held the reporters in contempt last October, rejecting their argument that they were shielded by the First Amendment. Though 31 states and the District of Columbia have state shield laws, there currently is no federal shield law. There is, however, legislation being proposed in both the House and Senate (HR 581 and S. 340) that would prohibit federal entities from forcing reporters to disclose the identity of a confidential source. But the passage of this legislation (if it is passed) will come far too late for the many reporters currently facing contempt charges by various judges and prosecutors — there are at least 16 reporters and 14 news organizations currently involved in legal fights in courthouses from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco. Consider what is at stake: Would former FBI official Mark Felt (a.k.a. Deep Throat) have ever contacted Bob Woodward of The Washington Post if he could not have been completely certain that his identity would have remained a secret? The information Felt provided became the fulcrum for an investigation that revealed the threat posed to our democracy by an administration that was not ruled by law but by dirty tricks. Such whistleblower examples abound. For the Supreme Court not to have heard the Miller-Cooper appeal was a craven example of the drift by our government toward an increasingly narrow interpretation of the First Amendment. This disturbing trend can be traced back to the 2003 ruling by Judge Richard Posner of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, when he ruled that subpoenas to journalists should be judged on the same merits as subpoenas to anyone else. This ruling challenged a long-standing belief that reporters worked under special First Amendment protections. Such assumptions are now clearly in jeopardy. Judith Miller, the New York Times correspondent who now stands ready to go to jail, perhaps said it best. “What’s at stake here is the public’s right to know. I can’t work in the area of national security and intelligence, covering terrorism, unless people who are not authorized to speak to me feel that they can come to me and tell me things... It’s at the heart of investigative reporting, it’s at the heart of national security reporting, and it’s at the heart of what we do as journalists.” DailyTidings.com Home Page Archives | Revels | Classifieds | Real Estate Guide | Weather | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2005 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Deep Muscle Stimulator Ceramic Piggy Banks FREE Entertainment Guide Women's & Men's Slippers Accelerate Weightloss Products Backpacks Online Pharmacy Vegas Travel Guide Search Engine Optimization Student Loans Hotel & Airline Reservations Hammocks Water Filter Helzberg Diamonds Online Casinos Community Bonus Casino Mortgage Calculator Security Systems Mailing Lists Click Here Advertisement .:Advertisements:. Site Search: RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams