Reportage Medialog

While the idea that Judy Miller is employing a redemption through martyrdom strategy is being given short shrift by those close to her many commentators are noting that this case is not about journalism in the abstract it is very much about the current state of journalism

Thomas M. Burton, a Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent in the Chicago bureau of The Wall Street Journal, told the NYT he stood solidly behind Ms. Miller, “particularly at a time when journalists have come under scrutiny about the degree to which they can be believed and their reliance on anonymous sources.”

“The facts are complicated, but I have no doubt whatsoever that she is doing the right thing,” Mr. Burton said. “Like so many of us, she needs to send a message to the public that many of us are willing to stand up and pay the ultimate price to make news reporting possible.”

Howard Kurtz makes the point that this maybe a necessary stand but the circumstances make it very ethically grey:

Journalists, who have watched their public standing plummet in recent years, find themselves defending an abstract principle in a case in which the sources are not the sort of corporate and government whistle-blowers who were among Time’s “Persons of the Year” in 2002 but rather political insiders seemingly bent on partisan mischief.

By upholding the principle of confidentiality, said Time writer Margaret Carlson, “you’re protecting a creep.”

Kurtz also points out another strange set of circumstances:

The jailing of Miller comes during a week when Bob Woodward, once played by Robert Redford, is publishing a book about his relationship with the Watergate source known as Deep Throat. The former FBI official, W. Mark Felt, has reached a book and movie deal in which he could wind up being portrayed by Tom Hanks.

The contrast seems to capture a changing mood toward the shadowy dealmaking in which journalists extract information by promising to withhold people’s names — a practice that major news organizations now admit has been overused and abused — and sources use their anonymity to spin, settle scores or expose what they see as wrongdoing

If this is a case that is about the current state of journalism it is also a case about the current state of politics and the collusion that occurs between high level political sources with their own agendas and highly placed journalists who try their best to milk the system but who perhaps more often that not get taken for a ride by their sources - just as Miller was over WMD.

The introduction of national shield laws is not the solution to this wider problem. It may only exacerbate it. What is needed is a thorough rethink about journalism source relationships and a more rigorous attempt to evaluate the potential motive behind their play in the game.