To the klink with Judith Miller:
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.
“There are times when the greater good of our democracy demands an act of conscience,” Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman of The New York Times Company and publisher of The New York Times, said in a statement. “Judy has chosen such an act in honoring her promise of confidentiality to her sources. She believes, as do we, that the free flowof information is critical to an informed citizenry.”
Bill Keller, the newspaper’s executive editor, said outside the courthouse that Ms. Miller’s decision to go to jail rather than disclose her source was a “brave and principled choice.”
“This is a chilling conclusion to an ultimately confounding case,” he said.
I really don’t care what the law is or how complicit some say the Times is in creating this situation, I just find it a little disturbing that the government has the power to jail people for not disclosing anonymous sources- particularly when the reporter hasn’t even written (to my knowledge- I may be wrong) a story about the issue.
*** Update ***
The general consensus in the comments is that I am full of shit (no news flash there).