The Libby War on Journalism
The court case surrounding I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s indictment has scared journalists and journalism alike. Reporters are being subpoenaed to testify in a court case about the very nature of their work: the cultivation of information for the good of the republic, and the people for which it serves.
The case strikes at the heart of the current political climate: Libby was indicted for obstructing the investigation of the source of a leak of a clandestine agent’s name; that name belongs to Valerie Wilson, the wife of administration war critic Joe Wilson.
Valerie Wilson was a CIA agent investigating weapons of mass destruction around the world. Joe Wilson was sent by the CIA to investigate a claim made by President Bush in his State of the Union address that Saddam Hussein was actively looking to procure uranium from Niger, which Wilson found to be false.
He published his findings in an op-ed in the New York Times, and a week later, Valerie’s name was printed in a column from noted conservative Robert Novak. An investigation took place, which resulted in the indictment, but the source of the leak was not identified, allegedly because Libby obstructed the investigation.
Recently, there has been concern from journalists about how this case can affect them, because many notable Washington journalists have testified during the trial, including Matthew Cooper of Time Magazine, Tim Russert of NBC News, David Sanger and Judith Miller of the New York Times, and Bob Woodward and Walter Pincus of the Washington Post.
The trial thus far has shown how deep the contempt of the newsmedia is by the administration. The distrust of the skeptical press is nothing new to government officials, but the press has never seen its watchdog status undermined to this extent. The administration challenges its critics by attacking the most vulnerable parts of a person’s psyche, that is, his or her family.
Rather than engage the press, the administration spoke, and continues to speak to fragments of the population by concentrating on its conservative base. Look at Vice President Cheney and his dogged insistence only to be interviewed on the pandering network Fox News. When Wolf Blitzer on CNN interviewed Cheney, he refused to answer many of the questions asked of him, claiming that no man would answer such questions. In addition, the administration was caught in 2005 paying a conservative pundit $240,000 to promote its education agenda.
The reporters are at the center of this story, due to the aggressiveness of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, and his insistence on getting access to the reporter’s notes and sources, both of which were confidential in their reporting, especially Cooper and Miller. Judith Miller went to jail for 85 days to protect her source, who signed an agreement to allow her to testify to the grand jury.
There were many problems associated with the journalists as well, however. Many saw Miller making herself a martyr in order to gain back credibility she lost at the Times for her flattering coverage of the WMDs in the run-up to the Iraq War. Some said she fabricated the stories without sources. Others accused her being a mouthpiece of the administration, planting stories for officials to cite.
Other journalists complain that their level of access to officials at the White House will be even more limited than before. The administration set a new standard for secrecy. Because it saw that the jailing of a reporter did nothing to benefit either Miller or the paper she represented, secrets are more closely protected, journalists are loathed even more vocally and information concerning government action is both scarcer and more carefully scrutinized.
The story by James Glanz in Monday’s New York Times concerning intelligence that Iran is supporting the Shi’ite death squads is a perfect example. The military had to conduct its briefing in anonymity, because they would not attribute a face to the accusations. “The officials also asserted, without providing direct evidence, that Iranian leaders had authorized smuggling those weapons into Iraq for use against the Americans… That inference, and the anonymity of the officials who made it, seemed likely to generate skepticism among those suspicious that the Bush administration is trying to find a scapegoat for its problems in Iraq, and perhaps even trying to lay the groundwork for war with Iran,” he wrote. None of this would have been added to the report in a time of trust between the administration and the press.
The new precedent of subpoenaing journalists can only be a bad thing for the news business. If access is limited and credibility decreases, how can the public find the information it desperately needs and requires to make decisions on the actions of the government? The press will be seen as an arm of the government, exactly what the founders feared when writing the Constitution. Remember what Thomas Jefferson said about the importance of press and security: “The only security of all is in a free press.”
Unless this free press, and its ability to do its work is lionized in the country, the days of watchdog journalism will be over, state-sponsored propaganda will seize the day and we will inch ever closer to the world to which Orwell referred in his controversial dystopian world in 1984.
No comments:
Post a Comment