Reportage Medialog

The biggest media story at the moment is the prospect of Judith Miller from the NYT and Matt Cooper from Time going to jail for refusing to reveal their sources over the Valerie Palme incident. There are many complexities to this case but it comes down to a standard issue of journalists having the courage to protect their sources no matter what. Howard Kurtz has a good round-up of some of the key reactions. He also makes the key point that this is also a public relations issue for journalists and one that they are not necessarily winning:

In terms of public opinion, of course, this is a terrible test case for journalists. The Plame leakers are not exactly Mark Felt, and fairly or unfairly, Miller and Cooper are seen by some as protecting high officials who carried out a tawdry act of revenge. Their response is that journalists must keep their word when making a pledge of confidentiality and can’t pick and choose according to how sympathetic the sources are. But this remains a tough sell, PR-wise, even though neither of them would be in this situation had Novak not published the leak. And the general public dissatisfaction with journalists using so many unnamed sources, which some major news outlets are now trying to reduce, doesn’t help.

One of the ironies of this story is that this is not the first time that Judith Miller has got herself into trouble trusting sources. She was a key culprit in the NYT’s coverage of the WMD issue and her mistakes largely resulted from her not properly scrutinising the reliability and secondary motives of her Iraqi sources. For a good over view of Miller’s career and an analysis of her role in the WMD saga see here. She copped a lot of flak for her WMD reports but if she sticks to her guns and does jail time she will win the ultimate journo brownie points and her heroic stand will become part of the standing mythology of American journalism while the WMD incident will probably fade into the half remembered past.