09 July 2005

More Reporters in Jail Fallout

There's a very important article today in the New York Times about the results of the Matt Cooper/Judy Miller affair (which is what it is now, rather than the Valerie Plame affair). It seems that the widely respected Cleveland Plain Dealer has decided not to publish two stories that were written after a reporter was given two memos that should never have been given to the reporter. The publisher of the paper says that his reporter was willing to go to jail over it, he himself was willing to go to jail over it, but the paper itself wasn't willing to take the risk (the risk that they might have to pay a fine).

With the rise of the semi-journalistic blog (all hard news all the time, as we saw Thursday and Friday with the net-wide insistence that Rehnquist was going to retire from the Court as soon as Bush's plane landed Friday afternoon at 4'15; nobody retracted their statements, but when it didn't happen, they just stopped talking about it), and the creeping restriction of the freedoms of the legitimate (print) press, I fear we're now seeing the last days of even remotely trustworthy journalism.

In any event this is a very, very important article, and you very much need to read it, and then send it to all your friends and relatives, too.

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