In the Washington Post, media reporter Howard Kurtz analyzes the jailing of a reporter. He writes, “This is a strange moment in the sometimes polarized, sometimes interdependent relationships among politicians, prosecutors and the press. Judith Miller of the New York Times is in jail — not, for the moment, the administration official or officials who may have violated the law in discussing Valerie Plame’s undercover role with her — over a case in which her newspaper’s editorial board praised the Justice Department’s decision to bring in a special prosecutor.
“Journalists, who have watched their public standing plummet in recent years, find themselves defending an abstract principle in a case in which the sources are…political insiders seemingly bent on partisan mischief. By upholding the principle of confidentiality, said Time writer Margaret Carlson, ‘you’re protecting a creep.’ What makes the spectacle even more surreal is that Miller never wrote a story about Plame after two senior administration officials passed the information to columnist Robert D. Novak two years ago. Some, including Plame’s husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, have suggested that she was identified in retribution for a Times opinion piece he wrote in July 2003, charging the administration with twisting intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war.”
Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/06/AR2005070602063.html