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BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis
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Subject: BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis From: Amos Date: 05 Dec 04 - 10:16 AM From the current editorial page of the NY Times: Showdown for Press Freedom Published: December 5, 2004 The First Amendment suffered a blow in October when a federal trial judge sentenced two reporters to prison for up to 18 months each for refusing to comply with subpoenas to reveal their confidential sources before a federal grand jury. Their sentences were stayed pending a consolidated appeal, which is scheduled to be heard this Wednesday by a three-judge appellate panel in Washington. This challenge to press freedoms comes courtesy of Patrick Fitzgerald, the United States attorney and special prosecutor charged with investigating accusations that the Bush administration illegally leaked the name of a covert Central Intelligence Agency operative, Valerie Plame, to the columnist Robert Novak in order to punish her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV, for criticizing Iraq policy. Mr. Fitzgerald's inquiry has evolved into a major assault on the confidential relationship between journalists and their sources, which was of critical importance in exposing the very abuse of governmental power that prompted Mr. Fitzgerald's involvement in the first place. We have special reason to be concerned. One of the journalists is a Times reporter, Judith Miller. The other is Matthew Cooper of Time magazine. But the possibility that journalists may be incarcerated merely for acting on principle to preserve press freedom ought to trouble everyone - including members of Congress, who should use this occasion to approve legislation explicitly extending safeguards against forced disclosure of sources to all federal proceedings. The rest of the essay can be found here. Ever since Bush started the idea to use the Constitution for a sexual morals pulpit, I have feared that we are steering into a real twister -- a battle between those who wish to continue the great experiment in civic freedoms unleashed by the Framers and those who think of the Constitution merely as the top gear in a complex political machine, available to serve any ends. Do you think the Constitution is "under attack" as the liberal press asserts? And if so, why and how? A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis From: Chief Chaos Date: 05 Dec 04 - 07:18 PM I can't see that allowing the press to use information given by a confidential source which destroys a persons career and endangers their life is a good thing. It used to be a matter of journalistic integrity to protect the source who had revealed wrong doing by a corporation or the government. In other words a "whistleblower". That these journalists are willing to go to jail for someone who named an undercover agent for what seems like revenge on her husband for disagreeing with the whitehouse is ludicrous. Thier loyalty is misplaced. You need sources like that like you need another hole in your head! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis From: Peace Date: 05 Dec 04 - 07:42 PM "may be incarcerated merely for acting on principle to preserve press freedom ought to trouble everyone" While I agree with YOU Amos, I cannot agree that anyone acting on principle should ipso facto be given special privilege. If that principle is supported by law, OK. Let's see what the ruling is. Then, maybe there'll be a cause to support. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis From: Amos Date: 05 Dec 04 - 08:09 PM The issue is not whether the "leaker" should be protected per se but whether a journalist should be the one required to reveal his source. The duty of journalism is to inform, not to enforce. To confuse the two missions is the path to serious confusion and loss. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis From: Peace Date: 05 Dec 04 - 08:10 PM However, it opens the door for newspapers to make news and then claim they are protecting an informant. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis From: Once Famous Date: 05 Dec 04 - 08:17 PM Journalists have no right to protect criminals. They become accomplices. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis From: GUEST,.gargoyle Date: 05 Dec 04 - 08:19 PM brucie, Which side of the Atlantic/Pacific are you posting from?
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Subject: RE: BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis From: GUEST,.gargoyle Date: 05 Dec 04 - 08:31 PM No matter which side of brucie's "real world" using: |
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Subject: RE: BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis From: CarolC Date: 05 Dec 04 - 08:34 PM I have mixed feelings about this one. Since the media in the US these days serves more as a defacto propaganda arm for the government, rather than a legitimate journalistic enterprise, is it really journalists who would be protected by not having to divulge their sources? Or are we really just helping the government reinforce its propaganda smoke screen these days when we worry about "journalists" having to divulge their sources? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis From: mack/misophist Date: 05 Dec 04 - 09:08 PM It's a well established principle in jurisprudence that "bad cases make bad case law." This is a classic exapmle. Although justice is clearly on the side of the plaintiffs, the overall idea is too important to allow it to be eroded. The storey should never have been published in the first place. Now that it has, villans like Novak can hide behind the First Amendment. Too bad, but necessary to ensure a free press. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis From: CarolC Date: 05 Dec 04 - 09:17 PM What free press? It's not really possible to have a free press with most of the media being owned by huge and powerful monopolistic conglomerates. We can't protect something we don't, and can't possibly, have. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis From: GUEST,.gargoyle Date: 05 Dec 04 - 09:21 PM Carol
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Subject: RE: BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis From: Amos Date: 05 Dec 04 - 09:27 PM Traditionally the right of the press to tell the truth has also required the right of the press to NOT reveal the sources of their information. Criminal or not, the issue is one of making it possible for people to tell the press. If Deep Throat had been known to the Watergate reporters Woodward and Berstein, he might have never spoken out, because he could have been charged with some sort of crime. If you do NOT make reporters safe from enforced revelation then you will NOT have a society honoring the sanctity of its free press and counting on it to keep the other factions of the society a little more honest. And without that, the whole kit kat and kaboodle is GRAVELY at risk. Carol's concern has merit, a different issue concerning the corruption of the press by other forces (commercial domination, intimidation by the government and so on). A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis From: Chief Chaos Date: 05 Dec 04 - 09:38 PM Yeah but Amos we're talking about committing a felony in print! These guys weren't hearing a story about what the Gov. had done wrong. They outed an undercover agent who had done nothing wrong! They killed her career and definitely endangered her life. Not to mention the fact that now everyone she has ever worked with or had any contact with has got to wonder what her motives were at the time. They have pretty much destroyed her and it seems to be because her husband, not her, disagreed with the whitehouse. Whoever gave them the info has committed a felony. Whoever conspired with the sources, created the stories and published/aired them has also committed a felony. These journalists in this case are nothing more than criminals. I agree with protection of the source when it is uncovering illegal/illicit dealings, but that doesn't give them carte blanche under freedom of the press. This is akin to yelling fire in a crowded theatre. They're just lucky the judges haven't imprisoned them for revealing the information. THe sources should be outed and punished. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis From: CarolC Date: 05 Dec 04 - 09:43 PM Interesting comment, Gargoyle. I guess my expansion of the term "legitimate journalistic enterprise" would be this: Any enterprise that is concerned with and that engages in the business or the practice of "journalism". Webster's Online defines journalism in this way... 1 a : the collection and editing of news for presentation through the media b : the public press c : an academic study concerned with the collection and editing of news or the management of a news medium 2 a : writing designed for publication in a newspaper or magazine b : writing characterized by a direct presentation of facts or description of events without an attempt at interpretation c : writing designed to appeal to current popular taste or public interest Websters Online defines "news" as... 1 a : a report of recent events b : previously unknown information (I've got news for you) 2 a : material reported in a newspaper or news periodical or on a newscast b : matter that is newsworthy ...and this is how Websters Online defines "propaganda"... 1 capitalized : a congregation of the Roman curia having jurisdiction over missionary territories and related institutions 2 : the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person 3 : ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one's cause or to damage an opposing cause; also : a public action having such an effect. Does this expand the term adequately for what you wanted to know? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis From: Rapparee Date: 05 Dec 04 - 09:50 PM Back when I was seriously considering journalism as a career, we protected our sources. But we also checked the information we were presented with by them quite thoroughly. I remember one time that we had excellent information that a member of the local college faculty was having an affair with another faculty member -- who happened to be a priest. Both were adults, both were unmarried (well, duh!, he was a Catholic priest), and they were discrete. We did nothing; eventually he left the priesthood and they were married. The scandal we could have caused would have accomplished nothing except the destruction of two careers. I don't think that reporters today ask the question, "I can, but should I?" before they break a story. The military has learned not to trust reporters (remember the beach scene in Somalia, where the SEALs were coming ashore in the floodlights of the TV cameras, trying to secure a beach under questions from the press?). And I, frankly, now feel like the politicians and the activists of all sorts do -- their there to be used. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis From: Amos Date: 05 Dec 04 - 11:34 PM CC: Outing Valerie P. was an unethical act, and possibly a criminal one. The reporter should have thought more seriously about it before taking advantage of the opportunity to make a story. Or perhaos he should have made the story out of the Leaker rather than the undercover agent. But it would have ruined him as a reporter, probably. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis From: Deda Date: 06 Dec 04 - 12:17 AM I'll never give any credence to Robert Novak again, so his career is dead with ME. I'm sure that keeps him awake nights. I agree with Carol C that the mainstream press is now owned by the same conglomerates that are huge donors to, and seem to pull most of the marionette strings to, the scum currently in the white house. The US at this point is a plutocracy, flirting with Fascism. It mattered that Eric Severeid or Walter Cronkite or Woodward & Bernstein had legally guaranteed freedoms to do their jobs. Who is doing their jobs now? Is anyone? In order to feel that I'm getting a reasonably straight story these are my choices: 1. Foreign press on line 2. Some bloggers on line 3. BBC news on radio and public TV 4. The radical left press like Pacifica, Democracy Now, and Air America. "Radical Left" only because they don't seem to answer to any corporate interests. I do want these people to have a guaranteed right to protect their sources. As for Robert Novak, I actually think that he AND his sources ought to be drawn and quartered. And no, I'm not impartial. I hate the direction that the country is going in. I'd like to secede from the union, except that all my friends and family are here and I live here, too, and I believe there ought to be room for dissidents here. HI AMOS. Love, Deda |
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Subject: RE: BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis From: Rapparee Date: 06 Dec 04 - 09:47 AM To point out some things that seem sort of tangential to the thread but are, or might be, germane: In 2008, the Bushites are out. Cheney has stated that he won't run and he has too many enemies to do so. Whatever they want to accomplish they must accomplish before the next election. Problem is, the amount of political capital Bush has is rather irrelevant -- witness the recent defeat of the Intelligence Reform bill. Everyone wanted it, but for several reasons it didn't get passed. Why? Okay. Otis Bowen, a former governor of Indiana and a politician par excellence, once said to the Indiana Library Association, "I don't understand you librarians. You neither reward your friends nor punish your enemies." And that's the key to it: reward your friends, punish your enemies. That, and Tip O'Neil's dictum that "All politics is local." Since Bush & Co. will not be in power after 2008, it's a lame duck presidency and the politicos already sniff lame duck blood. As for his vaunted "morality" edge -- forget it, politicians will use who they can for their own advantage and when the election is over throw a few crusts to the dogs who put them in office. Bush continues to use the 9-11 card, but I think that it's starting to lose its edge. Thompson's recent resignation and statement about the vulerablity of the US food supply is disingenuous, as the food supply is not concentrated in a small area, as was the WTC -- you need too many people to attack it and the more people involved the more likely a crack (yeah, I'm quite aware of ways the food supply could be attacked in one city, but I'm speaking of the nation as a whole). There are other signs that 9/11 is losing its edge. The replacement of TSA personnel in some airports (e.g., O'Hare) with contract employees, as pre-9/11. The failure of the Administration to fund and staff such efforts as port and rail security. Bush and his bunch seem not to be able to do the multi-tasking that the job requires. Because the next election will be between "brand new" candidates there is little reward for the faithful and little punishment to fear after the elections in 2006. Those whose terms end after 2006 (and that's most of the Senate, I think) have nothing to expect from the White House. Just some thoughts at an ungodly hour. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis From: freda underhill Date: 06 Dec 04 - 09:56 AM what lessons does Watergate offer for today's beleagured media? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis From: Bee-dubya-ell Date: 06 Dec 04 - 10:03 AM The purpose of journalism is to disseminate truth. "Truth" and "fact" are not synonymous. Truth extends several levels beyond mere fact. When facts are presented in a context in which they are used to promote a dishonest agenda, they are not part of the truth. They are still factual, but they are not truthful. While I am enough of a supporter of civil liberties to agree that the reporters have the right to refuse to divulge their sources, I question the reporters' ethics in refusing to do so. To me, it is on a par with refusing to reveal a source who told them an outright lie because the information they were given, while factual, ultimately fails the test of truth. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis From: Bee-dubya-ell Date: 06 Dec 04 - 01:07 PM Then, on the other hand... I'm not a fan of conspiracy theories, but I think we have to at least consider the fact that whoever leaked this information has extremely powerful connections and that the consequences to the reporters for revealing their sources may be more severe than the consequences of not revealing them. Just a thought and, yes, a bit of a paranoid one at that, but who's to say? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 06 Dec 04 - 01:33 PM Since Bush & Co. will not be in power after 2008... Touch wood. What's the betting they'll put up Jeb Bush? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis From: kindaloupehackenweez Date: 06 Dec 04 - 01:43 PM Hay Carol; As politics is one of the 3 things one should never disscuss. I feel free to brake the rules once again. Your right and dont just assume anything where goverment is concerned./ They treat us as stupid and or sheep lead to slotter. The people in charge of letting us know just what they want us to hear. More times then not leaving out the real and simple truth. Everyone blames someone else so no one can be accountable for the discussion of others. There is a perticular group or race that owns all the broadcasting and publishing companys that decides what is to be spoken as not to keep people properly informed of the issues. All in an elaborate plan to pit brother against brother and sister against sister son against father and so one. The groups name im talking of is anything but KOSHER but dont wish to sound racist. But there the ones with most of the money and big brother is evoulving and its too late. All one can do now is expect the worst and hope for the best for the world we were raised to leave in no longer exist and thats sad. Very sad. A true lover of life and patoriate. Yet all one can do as not to let it consume there life is to remember to treat others as you would like to be treated and lead by example by being polite and personnable in everyday incounters and let the war pigs be acountable for there crimes come judgement day as everyone else will. For as the acient romans believed i also believe that how we live this life will follow us into the next and if all else fails, there is Hell. And there aint no laws there..God i hate polictical conversations...Brings me down. But with Easy Rider on the tube and the "Band" playing "the Weight". Will sloth like move back into the bedroom and rest a couple more hours and get mentally prepared for another week of MANDATORY 5-12 hour day week. Were free alright free to be homeless if we dont conform to the drown clone mindless wounders thats expected of the common person living in this society. Yet still better than South America or Africa...Be free and happy...And keep the faith of truth, justice and the American way what ever that is anymore. And do the best you can to make damn sure the world is good to ya..Kindaloupehackenweez.....PEACE.... |
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Subject: RE: BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis From: GUEST,Chief Chaos Date: 06 Dec 04 - 02:22 PM Bee -dubya-ell, I'm afraid if I were those sources the reporters would already be dead. After all, even if the reporters managed to have files in mailboxes waiting to go to certain people the sources could always say it was a frame-up. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis From: Peace Date: 06 Dec 04 - 02:43 PM Dear Greg Golgart: I will let you know when you get back to California. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis From: Rapparee Date: 06 Dec 04 - 03:22 PM Jeb Bush is out in 2008 -- he's already said so, and he's carrying too much baggage. Hey! How about...Jena!? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis From: Tannywheeler Date: 06 Dec 04 - 03:32 PM I'm sorry to have missed part of this story. How are Miller and Cooper involved? I understood it was Novak who colluded with the leaker in the threat to the life of the ambassador's wife. The leaker was committing an act of treason. The story should have been that, not the undercover agent's name. "Journalists" should turn away from sensationalism and sycophancy, or just call themselves pr managers for gov't or entertainment industry. (IMHO) Tw |
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Subject: RE: BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis From: LadyJean Date: 07 Dec 04 - 12:07 AM The consensus of the faculty of the Ohio University School of Journalism, in the Post Nixon era, was, if we can find it out, so can anybody. So, let the police do their job and find the criminal. Don't do it for them by revealing a source. A question asked more than once was "What would you do if you had advance knowledge of the D-day invasion?" The answer we were given, was to sit on the information, until it was safe to publish it. But, make sure the government knew that you knew, if a journalist could hear about it, so could a spy. This having been said, if they were alive today, Woodward and Bernstein would be chasing Britney Spears and rooting through Brad Pitt's garbage. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis From: Nerd Date: 07 Dec 04 - 01:16 PM They are alive today, and that's not what they're doing, LadyJean. They are in fact disagreeing to varying extents with the Bush administration, and still publishing, though Woodward's book treated the president pretty well |
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Subject: RE: BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis From: Rapparee Date: 07 Dec 04 - 04:17 PM Actually, I seem to remember that several journalists did know about D-Day. In fact, I think that a story broke BEFORE the the invasion was launched, but that the AP office in New York killed it because they couldn't get other confirmation. There are times and places when you should keep your mouth (and pen) shut. I don't think that I could live with myself if I broke a story because I could, and as a result more people died than needed to. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis From: CarolC Date: 07 Dec 04 - 08:01 PM if they were alive today, Woodward and Bernstein... LOL Woodward and Bernstein are as good as dead as investigative journalists. They're too busy kissing the asses of, and toeing the line for the megamedia propagandists to do anything that would actually help. They always sell out when they get the mortgage and the 2.5 kids. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis From: GUEST,petr Date: 07 Dec 04 - 08:19 PM Novak insisted that CBS reveal its sources for the 60mins Bush papers (Rathergate) you know Finding Memo? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis From: Bobert Date: 07 Dec 04 - 08:34 PM Well, as many have said, I have mixed feelings as well... If one has to reveal one's sources, the source's will dry up... But given what CarolC has observed of the press kissing up to the big boys, how can I believe them if they won't tell... It's one heck of a mess... And worse that it being one heck of a mess, most of the time it involves illegal behaviors... Bobert |
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Subject: RE: BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis From: Rapparee Date: 07 Dec 04 - 09:40 PM I doubt that the sources would dry up. Far too many people crave that little bit of fame, of knowing (even if they can't shout it out) "I did that." Besides, DC is so bloody full of the self-important that if vanity had weight the town would have sunk clear through to China years ago. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis From: Peace Date: 07 Dec 04 - 10:39 PM " . . . if vanity had weight the town would have sunk clear through to China years ago." And taken with it that benevolent old asylum for the helpless (just wanted that line of yours to get a place beside Twain). Good one, Rapaire. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis From: Amos Date: 13 Dec 04 - 06:19 PM A telling dissertation on the interference by the judiciary branch with the free exercise of the press can be found in this New York Times editorial. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis From: Amos Date: 26 Feb 05 - 11:17 AM From today's Times (NY), a breath of good news for a change: Editorial: A Victory for Press Freedom Published: February 26, 2005 In a welcome ruling for this newspaper, and the larger cause of robust journalism and government accountability, a federal judge in New York has barred a federal prosecutor's ill-conceived effort to get the phone records of two Times reporters from the fall of 2001 in order to discover the identity of their confidential sources. To justify this intrusive fishing expedition, which could reveal hundreds of communications with confidential sources, the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, the United States attorney in Chicago, had argued that the records were needed for a grand jury's investigation of government misconduct in the disclosure of impending government actions against two Islamic charities. The judge, Robert Sweet, reasoned, correctly, that the subpoenas for the phone records were the functional equivalent of demanding testimony from the reporters themselves, and he took note of the important role of confidential sources in news investigations of the Watergate, Iran-contra, Monica Lewinsky and Abu Ghraib scandals. He explained that the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York recognized a qualified First Amendment privilege that protects reporters from being compelled to disclose their confidential sources. And he said Mr. Fitzgerald had not shown that the information he sought was critical and could not be gotten elsewhere. "The reporters at issue relied upon the promise of confidentiality to gather information concerning issues of paramount national importance," Judge Sweet wrote, referring to Judith Miller and Philip Shenon of The Times. "The government has failed to demonstrate that the balance of competing interests weighs in its favor." Judge Sweet's finding of broad protections for reporters facing grand jury subpoenas stands as a refreshing contrast with last week's chilling decision by a three-judge appellate panel in Washington. That panel found no such protection for members of the press in another case involving Mr. Fitzgerald and Ms. Miller: a grand jury's investigation into the disclosure of the identity of an undercover C.I.A. officer, Valerie Plame. The Washington appeals court ruling raised the prospect that Ms. Miller and Matthew Cooper, of Time magazine, could be jailed for up to 18 months for refusing to testify before a different grand jury. That situation cries out for a rehearing by the full appellate bench and, ultimately, Supreme Court review, especially in light of the contrary New York ruling. Meanwhile, an even more basic issue has been raised in recent articles in The Washington Post and elsewhere: the real possibility that the disclosure of Ms. Plame's identity, while an abuse of power, may not have violated any law. Before any reporters are jailed, searching court review is needed to determine whether the facts indeed support a criminal prosecution under existing provisions of the law protecting the identities of covert operatives. Some judge may have looked at the issue, but we have no way of knowing, given the bizarre level of secrecy that still prevents the reporters being threatened with jail from seeing the nine-page blanked-out portion of last week's decision evaluating the evidence." |
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Subject: RE: BS: Our Growing Constitutional Crisis From: Barry Finn Date: 27 Feb 05 - 04:20 AM The way I see it with many reporters, you make a deal & lie down with the devil you wake up in hell. I don't see that there's a free press at all. The media, espically since 9/11, has been directed what & how to report (with the exception of a handfull holdouts) the news. I no longer believe the word of the media When I want information I search out the news from a host of nations, that's the only way I feel like I can make an informed opinion. The press sucked up to this & went along now their getting sucked in. In my opinion they played the part of a whore & now they're getting fucked by the presidental pimp. Strange that more than 200 yrs ago the founding fathers knew full well the importance of a free press & respected it, today the US press gets no show of respect, they'll receive no fair play & the far reaching effect (IMHO) is that they've paved their own way towards becoming obsolete. Welcome, it's REALLY a brave new world out there now. Barry |
