Via those crazy Kossacks, this story about the Cleveland Plain Dealer holding back on stories:
Plain Dealer Editor Doug Clifton says the Cleveland daily is not reporting two major investigative stories of “profound importance” because they are based on illegally leaked documents — and the paper fears the consequences faced now by jailed New York Times reporter Judith Miller.
Lawyers for the Newhouse Newspapers-owned PD have concluded that the newspaper would almost certainly be found culpable if the leaks were investigated by authorities.
“They’ve said, this is a super, super high-risk endeavor, and you would, you know, you’d lose,” Clifton said in an interview Friday afternoon.
“The reporters say, ‘Well, we’re willing to go to jail, and I’m willing to go to jail if it gets laid on me,'” Clifton added, “but the newspaper isn’t willing to go to jail. That’s what the lawyers have told us. So this is a Time Inc. sort of situation.”
Both Miller and Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper faced jail on contempt charges for refusing to identify confidential sources, but Time agreed to hand over Cooper’s subpoenaed notes when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the reporters’ appeal. Cooper later agreed to testify to a grand jury, saying his source had given “express personal consent” to be identified.
Clifton declined to characterize the two stories, saying only they were based on material that was illegally leaked.
Clifton’s revelation that the PD was holding two investigative projects was actually first published in a column he wrote June 30 about the Miller and Cooper case. While the column garnered positive reaction, he said, almost nobody picked up on the disclosure tucked into the end of the piece.
“As I write this, two stories of profound importance languish in our hands,” Clifton wrote. “The public would be well served to know them, but both are based on documents leaked to us by people who would face deep trouble for having leaked them. Publishing the stories would almost certainly lead to a leak investigation and the ultimate choice: talk or go to jail. Because talking isn’t an option and jail is too high a price to pay, these two stories will go untold for now. How many more are out there?”
Rather than join in the chorus (or what will soon be a chorus) of wailing and beating of breasts, let me just say this:
And go do your damned job and stand up for what you believe in, for chrissakes. I don’t think Judith Miller should be in jail, but the law is not on her side, so she is doing what she thinks is right. So should you whiners, and if you have information that was leaked to you that are of ‘profound importance,’ and you don’t publish it because you are ‘afraid of jail,’ you don’t deserve my support or sympathy. You deserve my scorn.
If you think something is right, moral, and proper, you ignore the damned law and face the consequences. Some old guy who lived near a lake wrote about this once.
Don’t pay attention to ‘what could happen’ to you- do what you think is right. Thank goodness all journalists aren’t this spineless.
Stormy70
Amen. Let the chips fall where they may. Plus, this just sounds like political posturing on the Newspaper’s part. “If it wasn’t for the fact we don’t have sheild laws, then we could publish these kind of stories. See? See?” Wusses.
ppgaz
Ditto Amen. Mostly.
Except for the posturing part. I don’t think it’s posturing. Shield laws are appropriate, if well crafted. And at the end of the day, I’d ascribe what they are doing to a lack of spine rather than posturing. I can’t recall ever seeing a newspaper state that it is afraid to publish a story. I tip my cap to their honesty, and then I say, suck it up, and if your story is right, publish. Let the chips fall. Journalism is a little like street sweeping — it’s a thankless job. The government is not going to thank you for keeping it (somewhat) honest. The public is not going to hold pep rallies for you. You might get on Larry King, but that’s small consolation if you end up having to do jail time for protecting a source. Anyway, if you aren’t willing to take the risk, really, get into another line of work.
metalgrid
Just sell the information to an out of US news source, maybe Al Jezeera or the BBC. The story gets out, they make a tidy profit, everyone wins.
demimondian
Better than an old guy living near a lake, go back and remember that “Freedom isn’t free.”
Problem is, fighting for freedom is praised when it involves doing time in a Vietnamese prison camp for what you believe in, but not when it entails doing time in a minimum security Federal prison camp in the Catskills. It’s true (I hope) that you won’t get tortured in the Catskills, but it’s still the same thing, and it is just as (I hate this word) noble.
In my opinion, that’s the story we need to be telling the Plain Dealer. Not that they’re wimps, but that they could be brave, and stand up for what’s right.
KC
A fuckin’ men, John. You hit the nail on the head.
Geek, Esq.
Word to your mother.
jmaier
I pretty much agree but would note that it’s easy to call for courage when the other guys gonna do the time or face the guns.
McMartin
Hmm. As I read it, the reporters claim they were willing to do the time; it’s their bosses who will turn over their notes whether they want to or not, for the sake of “the newspaper”. (4th paragraph)
But a newspaper’s a corporation, so it can’t go to jail — thus, I’m kind of confused. What exactly is the newspaper risking if it gets convicted? Fines? The editors go to jail? Do representatives of the corporation get barred from events?
Dave Ruddell
John, it’s the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The CHICAGO at the begining of the story is the dateline.
John Cole
I originally wrote Cleveland and then edited the damned post to say Chicago.
I decided it must have been a Chicago paper because the Cleveland one was the Cleveland Plains-Dealer, not the Plain Dealer. I guee the phrase ‘the Cleveland daily’ should have been a clue…
At any rate, thanks and edited.
bryan
The newspaper is really getting a good deal out of this. They look like martyrs without having to actually be martyrs. They don’t say exactly what the information is related to, where it was obtained, or why it was illegally obtained.
While it’s nice for journalists to wrap themselves in the first amendment on these issues, there is the possibility that the information they obtained came – for instance – from a grand jury investigation, which, if published, might interfere with someone’s right to a fair trial – a right guaranteed by the sixth amendment. Oops!
Shield laws are NOT absolute, and NEVER HAVE BEEN absolute. There are conditions under which the journalist can – and should – be compelled to reveal their sources. The most obvious is when the information is relevant to a defendant’s case at trial.
Walter E. Wallis
Congress has a perfect shield law. Have a congressman front for you.
Jon H
It seems to me that technology should make this kind of thing unnecessary.
You can fit a lot of information on a thumb drive, or a DVD, which could be transferred to the media anonymously.
It’s not that hard to post things to the internet anonymously, or at least with a false trail (frex, by using an open WiFi hotspot).
Technology ought to make it far easier for a whistleblower to expose wrongdoing, while maintaining genuine anonymity, not a flimsy anonymity based on promises.
The media is no longer needed for widespread dissemination of information. They can still be useful in a role of pointing people to information on the internet, and in the role of vetting the information.
So I’m inclined to believe that concerns about the next Deep Throat or the next Pentagon Papers are misplaced. That model of whistleblowing may be out of date.
The new model may be that of the people who posted the nutty Scientology documents to the Internet.
valC
The editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer is just throwing a tantrum. Publishing the story wouldn’t put him in any legal jeopardy, it was witnessing the leak that did that. That’s why Judith Miller is in jail and Bob Novak isn’t.