| writing that puts story first

Ten hours or so ago, news broke that frankly had much of the media and journalism worlds talking about themselves. This sense of ironic importance, once a corner stone of bloggers, seemed oddly out of place amongst these paid journalists. Perhaps it wasn’t ironic importance that was being sensed, but rather fear. Was that the first few bits of the sky, or is this merely a collective case of Emperor’s New Clothes – was the media starting to believe its own hype?

By now her name is well known, Judith Miller, and the debate is not currently about the facts of the case, but rather was Judith a Constitutional Martyr or merely allowing her ego to call the shots? To find out, one must do what the Old Media is too busy to do – examine the history of the case.

The reason why Judith Miller refused to give up her source dates back to shortly after 9/11 and the subsequent “War on Terror”. The war was still young, only encompassing one foreign nation, Afghanistan, but the gathering of intelligence and the building of a case against Iraq had already started. A document surfaced in Italy and burned its way through the Italian press purporting the attempted purchasing of “uranium yellowcake” from Niger by Iraqi officials or operatives. While this report was burning through US and British intelligence communities, a representative of the CIA was sent to Niger to investigate. That representative was retired, former Ambassador and Democrat supporter Joseph C. Wilson. Wilson found no evidence of any sale, nor any evidence of attempted sale, and stated so in his briefing to the CIA. After his report failed to change what had seemingly been adopted as national policy, Wilson wrote an OpEd which was published in the Washington Post. The searing editorial harshly criticized the government, and gave reason to wonder just how someone so vehemently anti-Bush (falling under the patriotic False Dilemma that worked so well to polarize prior to the elections of 2004) was chosen to lead such an important investigation. Robert Novak unwittingly broke more than he expected to when he discovered that it was Wilson’s wife who recommended him for the assignment. How did Wilson’s wife have this kind of authority? She worked for the CIA, particularly, she worked in a field that would pertained directly to weapons of mass destruction.

Judith Miller was a supporter of Operation Iraqi Freedom from before it was even conceived, officially. She’s attributed with writing a great deal on the topic of Iraqi WMD possession and acquisition, and is noted as one of the leading interviewers of former Iraqis (in hindsight, such Iraqis are largely believed to be intentionally misinformed or active double agents). Following the break of Novak’s story, Miller, under her own investigation, never mentioned the already public name of Wilson’s wife.

Here’s where things get both complicated and dangerous. In 1982 the United States government passed the Intelligence Identity Protection Act of 1982, making it a federal crime to knowingly divulge the identity of an intelligence agent. As I am no lawyer, I won’t even pretend to understands the ins and outs of this act, but it does seem that in several limits on what determines an agent. That, it turns out, is the crux of the current investigation. While Novak isn’t being charged with this crime, the Grand Jury seems to have been formed to determine the source of the leaked name of Wilson’s wife.

The web gets a little more wicked when one takes into account certain facts. While Valerie Plame is no longer in NOC (Non Official Cover) status – technically existing undercover for a front organization – and moving away from field work after having been possibly identified as a covert years earlier, the knowledge of her having been a NOC created a factual starting point. Just like a wealth of personal information can be discovered merely by possessing an individual’s Social Security Number, the knowledge that Valerie was a covert agent allowed for the exposure of the CIA-operated front company which she formerly operated within. All former associates of Valerie (both professional and personal on the surface) could also become key steps in investigations by those with ulterior motives. Though Valerie herself was no longer working in covert operations, the knowledge that she was at one time allows for a logical starting point that could lead to the lose of cover for an unknown number of other intelligence officers regardless of current NOC, official, or even retirement status. Thus, the individual, or individuals responsible for this leak (not to mention Novak and his editorial staff) put the lives of an unknown number of intelligence agents at risk with the drop of one name.

With every other event in recent political history, the partisan line accusation had to have been made at some point. In this situation, the accusation goes along this line – the leak was made on purpose, in an attempt to discredit Wilson because he refused to play ball with the official statements coming from the Whitehouse. While the truth of that accusation remains to be determined, several journalists were subpoenaed in federal court to release the names of anonymous sources. While protection of journalistic rights varies from state to state, there is no United States law which protects the right of a journalist to not testify. In this respect, a journalist is not granted the same protection as other professions. Lawyers, doctors, and priests all enjoy client privileges, under which information is protected in order to favor accuracy against fear of reprisal. In these professions, truth is considered paramount to facilitate a working relationship, and thus these professions are supposedly protected from subpoena action. While it is certain that the means with which the name of Valerie Plame was leaked was handled irresponsibly in Mr. Novak’s article, the attention of the case has shifted to whether or not journalists should be protected in the same way that lawyers or doctors are.

Technology has facilitated the spread of the media, enabling any individual with a computer to act as journalist. While every journalist can be a blogger, not every blogger is considered to be a journalist. Several laws have been passed, and several court cases set precedence which largely have established the definition of a journalist. One such notable case concerns an unpublished author who conducted a thorough investigation into a Houston murder. The author, Vanessa Leggett spent 168 days in jail after refusing to divulge her confidential sources to the Fifth Circuit Federal Court. The court ruled that since Leggett was unpublished, she could not be considered a journalist. The Grand Jury finished before Leggett ever revealed her sources, and her commitment never waned. Since then, the definition of journalist has been debated, but the invitation of bloggers to cover both political parties during the 2004 Election seems to have added an air of legitimacy to bloggers. This legitimacy has only been bolstered by, what’s now being referred to as the “Old Media”, the public fascination with bloggers, and Old Media’s use of bloggers to gauge not only public opinion, but to break stories.

The difference between a blogger, or even a college educated journalist, and the other protected career categories, is the amount of schooling that is attributed to a certain level of professional responsibility. While a journalist serves no less of a vital public function, one can not simply become a lawyer or doctor. There are years of schooling involved in these professions, as well as standardized tests designed to determine who indeed is capable of bearing such responsibility. To become a journalist, thanks to the technological boom, one must merely do so. Unlike doctors or lawyers, there is no current check on journalists, but should there be?

Of course not. Enacting a Federal (or from any branch of the government) test to officially declare one a journalist would be a strike against the “Freedom of the Press” outlined in the First Amendment. This does raise a suspicious question though, how does one qualify a journalist? One such method would be a self-policing, in which journalists form a quasi-union or enact a body from which journalists are governed, though this would never work. The seeds of revolution, the words from which the United States itself sprung from, came from pamphlets that existed outside of State-run news organization. Men like Thomas Payne struck out against the Crown, and were effective enough in their impact that the United States Constitutional Congress was forced to draw up the “Bill of Rights” in order to ratify the Constitution and thus legitimize the nation. Any governing body, be it controlled by the government or by the peers of the journalistic world, would be seen (accurately or not) as a tool of the government, and thus would no longer act as a universal check. For the duty of the press, for journalists everywhere is to expose the whole of a story, as opposed to the story that benefits or will sell the best.

So, perhaps it is a good thing that Judith Miller is currently in jail. By going to jail, and thus not allowing herself integrity to be lessened by the United States government, Judith Miller legitimized herself as a journalist. While doctors and lawyers might have years of schooling to rationalize their protected status, Judith Miller proved that convictions of character might be just as important. Perhaps imprisonment will forever be the ultimate litmus test for a journalist, a bit more noble, and certainly more dramatic than the bar or MCAT could ever be. Hopefully this will never be the case, but with the spread of civil journalism, as with the spread of anything, quality is sacrificed for quantity.

With the case of Judith Miller, the right and wrong of the situation is not determined by what the Prosecutor is investigating, nor what the Grand Jury determines – as she did herself never break the law. No, in the case of Judith Miller, the right and wrong of the situation comes down to whether or not a journalist should merit the ability to be deemed a profession. Had Miller bent to the will of the court, today would have been a sad day for journalists everywhere, proving that the First Amendment only applies to those who truly believe in it, and setting an unfortunate precedent for future cases. As it stands, Miller doesn’t seem to have done anything wrong – having not been charged with any crime – and is merely performing her duty as well as any person of any profession can be expected. Indeed, the shame of the situation comes not from Judith being imprisoned, but the fact that her testimony possibly would have had no affect on the case at all. Immediately following Judith Miller’s detainment, word began to circulate that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was currently in the process of wrapping up his investigation.

In the end, it seems that everyone is clinging to personal beliefs. Fitzgerald seeks only to ensure that those who leaked information in a malicious sense are not allowed to hide behind the professional ethics of journalists. Miller seeks only to ensure that she is able to continue her chosen career, as serving jail time is a sure fire way to ensure the public recognition of one’s professional commitment. And perhaps, this case will draw enough attention to garner a federal shield law, officially protecting freedom of speech. But, in the end, this story is really about two people, each following their law to the letter. At least the civilian journalists across the nation, if not the world, now have a good example of what a journalist is capable of.