“It’s not necessarily clear that a press engaged in a tabloid-esque race to the bottom, consumed by sensationalist pseudo-stories, nuggets of McNews and flag-waving rhetoric, is a free press in any meaningful sense of the term,” writes Salon‘s Andrew O’Hehir in a thoughtful piece on the Judith Miller case. But, he concludes, “[c]ompelling a reporter to reveal his or her sources to the police turns that reporter into a police agent, and that’s not acceptable, even in unsavory circumstances like these.” Update: Salon readers poke some substantial holes in O’Hehir’s argument. Update 2: O’Hehir responds.
As a counterpoint, Slate‘s Jacob Weisberg argues the following: “To Miller and the Times, confidentiality is the trump value of journalism, one that outweighs all other considerations, including obedience to the law, the public interest, and perhaps even loyalty to country. This is indeed a strong principle, but it is a misguided one. In the Mafia, keeping confidences is the supreme value. In journalism, the highest value is the discovery and publication of the truth.“
And one more view by way of James Fallows, who’s written quite a bit on journalistic ethics in his time: “So Time Inc’s Norman Pearlstein says he will turn over Matthew Cooper’s notes, because Time magazine is ‘not above the law.’…Matt Cooper, Judith Miller, and the New York Times have been saying something completely different. They have been saying that there is a conflict between what the law asks and what their professional values allow them to do. Therefore they will take the consequences. They will go to jail….They are not placing themselves above the law. They are saying that certain values matter more to them than doing what the law now (outrageously, in my view) asks them to do. Norman Pearlstein is a smart man. Can he really have missed this point? Or is he acknowledging that another set of values have come to count for more, in large-scale corporate-owned journalism?“