Attacking The Free Press

Recently there has been an alarming increase in prosecutors requiring reporters to reveal their confidential sources. Prosecutors in several high-profile cases insisted that journalists name their sources, and judges backed up the demands by ordering reporters to testify or face fines and imprisonment.

The most scandalous example of this attack deals with syndicated columnist Robert Novak who cited two unnamed Bush administration officials, identified Valerie Plame as a CIA agent in a July 2003 piece. But instead of taking aim at Novak directly prosecutors are attacking journalists who have dissented against the Bush administration.

It is potentially illegal for government officials to willfully disclose the identity of an undercover CIA agent, and Attorney General John Ashcroft named a special prosecutor to investigate the source of the leak. However, the investigation, led by U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald, took aim at several reporters who were not involved in the story in question. At year's end, it appeared more likely that those reporters would go to jail before the government officials who may have violated the law.

Novak's column came eight days after Plame's husband, former diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV, wrote an op-ed piece in The New York Times challenging the Bush administration over its allegations regarding Iraq's weapons programs. Other reports surfaced later with Plame's identity, most suggesting that administration officials had leaked the name in retaliation against Wilson.

Last week the Supreme Court rejected appeals from New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper who have refused to testify before a grand jury. Both have declined for more than a year to identify confidential sources they spoke with in the summer of 2003 about government efforts to discredit a high-profile critic of President Bush's argument for going to war with Iraq: former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, the husband of CIA operative Valerie Plame. They argued that they could not do their jobs if they broke their promise of anonymity to sources who provided a look inside an increasingly secretive government.

In repressive countries, journalists are routinely compelled to reveal their sources... Because the United States has set a high standard for press freedom, any perceived weakening in U.S. protections provides cover for authoritarian regimes to justify crackdowns on the press. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Fri­as recently complained when international observers criticized his country's new media law, which severely restricts broadcast news coverage in the name of maintaining social order. They should complain instead, Chavez said, about "U.S. journalists that are being prosecuted by the government in Washington for not revealing their sources."

*Late breaking update*
Looks like Karl Rove, Bush's puppet man (or is he the puppet master?), was Novak's source, although the white house strongly denies it. Scandal is a brewin'!