Journalist discovers Journalistic Ethics.

Film at 11:00.

Alright, that’s a little too cavalier.

Here’s the story …

New York Times Reporter Jailed for Keeping Source Secret
By ADAM LIPTAK
and MARIA NEWMAN
Published: July 6, 2005

WASHINGTON, July 6 - A federal judge today ordered Judith Miller of The New York Times to be jailed immediately after she again refused to cooperate with a grand jury investigating the disclosure of the identity of a covert C.I.A. operative.

Another reporter who had been facing jail time on the same matter, Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, agreed today to testify to a grand jury about his confidential source on the same matter, thus avoiding jail. Mr. Cooper said he had decided to do so only because his source specifically released him from promises of confidentiality just before today's hearing.

The judge, Thomas F. Hogan of Federal District Court in Washington, rejected a request by Ms. Miller and her lawyers that she be allowed to serve her detention at home or in Connecticut or elsewhere, and ordered that she be put in custody and taken to a jail in the District of Columbia area until October, or until she changed her mind about testifying.

Ms. Miller herself told the court that she would not reveal her source no matter how long they jailed her.

"If journalists cannot be trusted to guarantee confidentiality, then journalists cannot function and there cannot be a free press," she read from a statement as she stood before Judge Hogan. "The right of civil disobedience is based on personal conscience, it is fundamental to our system and it is honored throughout our history," she said before court officers led her away, looking shaken.
…

We appear to have found the journalistic principle to which Judith Miller is willing to stick.

Was it Benjamin Franklin -- or Captain Stubing? -- who, when Ted Baxter held out briefly on but heroically a matter of honor in the last episode of Mary Tyler Moore before collapsing back into his True Hollow Self, said something about, “when you see a donkey fly, you shouldn't be surprised when it falls…just amazed that it flew at all in the first place?”

Seriously, I cannot help but hope that the Queen of All Iraq understands that she has found herself, not in a legal crisis, but in an ethical one. And it might sound corney, but I cannot help but hope that as her principled position forces her –- however briefly -- away from the life she knows and into federal custody, that she might use her time to do a little of the old-fashioned soul searching.

See, for the youngsters out there, prison actually used to have another purpose.

As it true of most social issues, before the Christian Right gained ascendancy, the idea of incarceration ironically used to have a genuinely Christian component. However imperfectly it was executed, the idea of just shoving someone into an iron box for a Mandatory Minimum and mocking anyone that suggested that they might actually deserve a little humanity used to be considered both sadistic and stupid.

Back when Sadistic and Stupid weren’t prerequisites for higher Republican Office.

Of course, punishment the crime. Of course make the bad guys do their time and pay their debt. And of course, keep the truly dangerous locked the hell away from the citizenry.

Gotcha.

But unless you’re planning on locking away everyone who gets busted for weed or burglary in prison forEVER (“Plan Gitmo”), you’d better figure out some way for them to use their State Mandated “Me” Time to do something productive.

There used to be a Progressive Christian Idea abroad in the land that a lot of prisoners weren’t genetically evil and beyond redemption, and that their incarceration could be used for introspection and moral instruction as well as being punitive. This was based on the radical idea that sometimes people can change if properly motivated and given the right tools.

Now is there a particular series of Penal Reforms I personally would recommend?

What the fuck? Do I look like a penologist to you?

(Actually I thought of going into that line of work -- the lab and field research seemed like they’d be fucking AWESOME – until someone told me that “penology” didn’t mean what I thought it meant.)

Besides, this is about Dame Judith, who I sincerely do hope will use the consequences of her honorable stance on not reveling her source as an opportunity to completely unpack the Ethical Toolbox and look at all of those other doodads and gimcracks that she has left to rot and rust.

She already has a killer job, and will most certainly command orders of magnitude more attention than usual once her case is resolved, so just imagine is she decided to use that chance to become a Giant? To stop shilling for the Thugs in Power, but instead, as the saying goes, use her power to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable?” To atone for being the sewer pipe though which the Administration and its creatures pumped their filthy lies out to a credulous world.

So good on you, Judith, for taking a stand.

That’s all.


No kidding.

Well...OK

That and this --



“Dearest Ahmad,

Prison is a lonely place, made even lonelier without the comforting feeling of your chubby feet resting on my back.

How tormented I am now by memories of our happy days together.

It is the little details that haunt me most. Your light, sweet crude scent lingering in the air long after you had gone. The wild, drunken 3:00 rides with you, Cheney and Wolfowitz through the back streets of the Tidal Basin as we spoke of the glorious future to come.

And I especially recall our “movie nights”, lying beneath you, gasping for air, after you had slaked your divine lusts, watching “Star Wars II" for the 7th or 10th time. You explaining to me that Saddam also had both a vast Clone and Robot army, outfitted with blasters and energy shields, in secret bunkers north of Tikrit...and me dutifully reporting your delightful tales in my newspaper the next day.

Good times, dear one. Good times.

It is lights out now, and I must go.

Know that the thought of being back in your soft, Oil Ministry arms sustains me greatly.

Your Once and Future Queen,

J.”