Arianna Huffington attacks Marie Brenner's Vanity Fair article on the Plame case, calling the article an unconvincing apologia for Brenner's friend Judy Miller. Huffington complains that Brenner is too biased to write about Miller objectively, doesn't disclose the friendship until late in the article, leaves out many important facts from the Judy Miller story, and that
Brenner's central thesis is wrong. Her overarching premise is that that Judy Miller went to jail for a noble cause -- the ability of reporters to protect confidential sources -- but the public and the press (led by those nasty bloggers) failed her and now it's open season on the free press."Traditionally," she writes, "there have been two generally recognized exceptions to journalistic privilege: matters of life and death and imminent actual threat to national security." But there is a third exception that Brenner conveniently leaves out, an exception spelled out in the ethical guidelines of the New York Times: "We do not grant anonymity to people who use it as cover for a personal or partisan attack." This was unequivocally the case with Plamegate. And, as the Times' ethical guidelines make clear, there is a world of difference between sources using confidentiality to blow the whistle on government or corporate misconduct, and sources using it to promote a war -- or to smear a critic of that war.
Doesn't the Plame leak arguably fall into the first two categories as well, at least if the second category is interpreted broadly? How do we know the leak didn't harm national security? And it may well have been a matter of life and death--for Plame's sources on WMD proliferation.
Comments
"Doesn't the Plame leak arguably fall into the first two categories as well?"
I don't think so. By the time Judith Miller went to jail, the (probable) harm to national security and Plame's contacts had already occurred. Miller's refusal to testify blocked the prosecution of a criminal; it didn't threaten national security or place anyone's life at risk.
Might I suggest that the reason Miller didn't have many defenders is that there isn't much of a case to be made in her defense. I whole heartedly support the right of a reporter to promise absolute confidentiality if that is what is required to get an important story. But Miller didn't give a promise of confidentiality in exchange for an important story; she gave it in exchange for a story that she didn't even bother to write up and submit to her editors.
Posted by: Kenneth Almquist | March 17, 2006 07:51 PM