Blind hubris

The NY Times bemoans the "punishment" of the press in an editorial that not only ignores the facts but lies about them (emphasis mine.)

Recent court developments have been grim for those who cherish a free press.

On Dec. 9, a television reporter in Providence, R.I., Jim Taricani, was sentenced to six months of house arrest for refusing to reveal who gave him an F.B.I. videotape showing a local official taking a bribe. Mr. Taricani did nothing illegal. Yet the Rhode Island federal judge who sentenced him pointedly said that only health problems spared him a prison term.

The worry now is that a three-judge federal appellate panel in Washington will take an equally cramped view of reporters' rights and affirm sentences of up to 18 months in prison that a lower court imposed in October on Judith Miller of The New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine. At issue is the pair's principled refusal to disclose their sources in connection with the investigation that the United States attorney and special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is leading into the leaking of the name of a covert C.I.A. officer, Valerie Plame, to the columnist Robert Novak.

I've written about Taricani's case before. The judge issued a court order that prevented a video tape of an informant from being publicized. Someone offered the tape to Taricani, and he aired it. The Times can protest until they turn blue in the face, but they are lying when they say "Taricani did nothing illegal." He defied a court order and concealed a crime. That is illegal.

The second case the Times refers to is the Valerie Plame case. While it's true the press has some special privileges, concealing illegal acts is not among them. Impeding an investigation is not among them either.

What the Times needs to do is invoke some of that vaunted research they claim to do and study the applicable case law. Were they to do that, they would find that they have no leg to stand on.

It is thus not surprising that the great weight of authority is that newsmen are not exempt from the normal duty of appearing before a grand jury and answering questions relevant to a criminal investigation. At common law, courts consistently refused to recognize the existence of any privilege authorizing a newsman to refuse to reveal confidential information to a grand jury.......These courts have applied the presumption against the existence of an asserted testimonial privilege, United States v. Bryan, 339 U.S. 323, 331 (1950), and have concluded that the First Amendment interest asserted by the newsman was outweighed by the general obligation of a citizen to appear before a grand jury or at trial, pursuant to a subpoena, and give what information he possesses.

Or, they could just read my blog.