Posted on 05/02/2005 7:06:25 AM PDT by Pikamax
Weakened freedoms
Published May 1, 2005
The Valerie Plame case has been a disaster for the news media, and it stands to get worse.
On April 19, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld a three-judge panel of the court, which in February ordered reporters Matthew Cooper of Time magazine and Judith Miller of The New York Times to testify about their confidential sources or go to jail for contempt. For the moment, they remain free while appealing to the Supreme Court to hear the case. But the prospects there don't look good. If the Supreme Court takes the case, which it may not, the reporters face a high probability of a ruling that would put journalists in a worse position than before.
The case arose in 2003, after career diplomat Joseph Wilson was asked by the CIA to investigate claims that Saddam Hussein tried to get uranium from Niger. When Wilson found no evidence and publicly criticized the Bush administration for making the claim, Robert Novak wrote a syndicated column stating that "two senior administration officials" told him Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA agent.
That disclosure might put the leakers in violation of a law forbidding government employees from outing undercover operatives. Sources in the administration apparently also contacted Cooper, who wrote a story mentioning Plame, and Miller, who did reporting on the matter but didn't write about it.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
They stepped in dogdoo and have it all over their shoes ping!
>>Plame was identified not because the disclosure served some urgent public interest, but apparently because someone in the administration wanted retribution against her husband.
It is not at all clear that "someone in the administration" made the leak. More like "someone in the bureauacracy", probably a Clintonite holdover.
In the Chicago Tribune's eyes, common law only applies to MSM reporters. Anyone else claiming common law rights is a right-wing freak.
I always love when a left wing plot swings around and bites them on the butt.
Meanwhile, the whole Plame affair has blown the lid off of the left-wing attempt to undermine President Bush by members of the intelligence and State Department bureaucracies. Many thanks to Robert Novak for this development.
Who appointed these "reporters" as censors of what we can know? It is far more impottant to know who in government is fingering spies than it is to know who the spies are. Throw the commie scumbag "reporters" in jail until they are willing to act like citizens and also report!
Never forget that Novak's home paper is the Chicago Sun-Times, the Tribune's direct local competiton. A little hometown vindictiveness here? If the Tribune is as reprehensible a "news" operation as its subsidiary, the LA Times, it deserves the worst. The Colonel must be rotating in his grave.
FYI.
Since it was a Dim that did it, and since no "journalists" were ensnared in the story, it's as if it never happened.
OMG.....you may be on to something, there, Miz!
Recent reports say that Powell was a CONSUMATE leaker while at State.
His reported behind-the-scenes actions on helping attempts to scuttle the Bolton nomination sure do fit that M.O.
Same deal with the complaints against DeLay.
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