The first thing I usually read on Sundays is Frank Rich’s column in the New York Times. Most weeks I find myself agreeing vociferously with the former editor and now columnist for the paper. His columns are smart and full of wit, and along with Krugman and Herbert, form the reliably liberal core of this supposed bastion of the Librul Media.
But not this week. Today’s column finds Rich hiding behind the journalist’s equivalent of the cop’s Blue Wall of Silence, where one cop won’t rat on another, no matter what kind of crime or malfeasance they may be hiding. Rich is joining ranks with all the other journalists who are coming to the defense of the jailed Judy Miller. Unlike me and most others in the blogosphere, Rich actually knows Miller, has worked with her, and may have some personal loyalties to her. Maybe he knows her family, her kids, and so, he is more than entitled to feel for her as a person. But he can’t excuse her.
In his column today [NYT Registration Req'd], entitled “We’re Not in Watergate Anymore”, Rich compares Miller’s protection of her source–a traitorous high government official who exposed the identity of Valerie Plame, a covert CIA operative for purposes of petty revenge against her husband–with Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s protection of their source, the recently unmasked Deep Throat, in the investigation of the Watergate break-in and cover-up.
Wrong, Frank. There’s a difference–and not a very subtle one–in the circumstances of these two scandals. In Watergate, the confidential source was providing evidence and guidance toward uncovering the existence of a crime committed by people at the highest levels of government. Whatever his motives, at great risk to himself and his career, he was helping to uncover misdeeds. Woodward and Bernstein and the editors and owners of the Washington Post protected him because his actions, self-serving as they may have been, also served the interests of the people of the United States.
Judith Miller’s actions are the direct opposite. By her silence, she is protecting a wrong-doer who has abused the power granted to him and therby harmed the interests of the people of the United States. She is aiding and abetting a traitor.
The reasons given for supporting Miller–that by compelling her testimony she will signal to potential informants that she should not be trusted–is speculative and weak and outweighed by her duties as a citizen. The press freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment was predicated on the press’s role as a government watchdog, able to expose the misdeeds of government and serve as a bulwark agains tyranny.
It is not the judge who has ordered Miller jailed for contempt of court who is abusing the First Amendment; it is instead those in the highest levels of the Bush Administration with the cooperation of Miller who are perverting that freedom. They are twisting the means of lighting the dark corners of governmental abuses into a means of hiding them in shadow.
