Reply #5: Here are some good rebuttals for this [View All]

[Eloriel]

IMO:

E&P: Karl Rove: Using Reporters--and Abusing the First Amendment
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4021846
and: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=1908252
Link: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/shoptalk_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000973352

"An attack on an administration critic, not whistle-blowing" - Fitzgerald
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=1909658
Link: http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/07/06/reporters.contempt/index.html

S. Blumberg: http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2005/07/14/plame/print.html
In the best-case scenario for Miller, Bill Kovach believes that any pledge she may have made to a source should be invalid. Kovach is the former Washington bureau chief of the New York Times, former curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University and founding director of the Committee of Concerned Journalists. He describes the internal policy set within the Times on sources. "By the 1980s, we decided that we had to set some limits because reporters had been misled and the credibility of the news reports had been damaged by misleading sources. When I was chief of the bureau in Washington, we laid down a rule to the reporters that when they wanted to establish anonymity they had to lay out ground rules that if anything the source said was damaging, false or damaged the credibility of the newspaper we would identify them."

In the Plame matter, Kovach sees no obligation of the reporters to false sources. "If a man damages your credibility, why not lay the blame where it belongs? If Plame were an operative, she wouldn't have the authority to send someone. Whoever was leaking that information to Novak, Cooper or Judy Miller was doing it with malice aforethought, trying to set up a deceptive circumstance. That would invalidate any promise of confidentiality. You wouldn't protect a source for telling lies or using you to mislead your audience. That changes everything. Any reporter that puts themselves or a news organization in that position is making a big mistake."

Obviously, the Times is not imposing the rules in its present crisis that Kovach was involved in making. Are the editors unfocused on the underlying facts and falsehoods? Do the editors have a responsibility to determine who is a fair source and who is a deceiver? Has anyone fully debriefed Miller? For now, the Times is frozen in its heroic defense of the First Amendment.

Judith Miller HAS named sources in the past
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=4054279&mesg_id=4054279
Link: http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/media/features/9226/index2.html

Judith Miller No Hero
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=4029626&mesg_id=4029626
Link: http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/blog/default.asp?view=plink&id=1217