By a margin almost incredible in these polarized times—398-21—the U.S. House has passed a bill protecting the rights of journalists not to reveal confidential sources. Fifty media organizations, including the Advocate's corporate parent, Tribune Company, publicly supported the bill, which was given impetus partly by the prosecutions of New York Times reporter Judith Miller and other journalists in connection with the Valerie Plame leak investigation.
The bill allows for exceptions if the source's identity must be disclosed in order to head off a terrorist attack or otherwise preserve the national security, or in cases where the journalist witnessed a crime or a source gave away confidential medical information. Nevertheless, President Bush has said he will veto it.
"The bill would provide a broad privilege to a large class of 'covered persons' that could severely frustrate… the Federal government's ability to investigate acts of terrorism and other threats to national security," the Office of Management and Budget said on behalf of the administration.
Yet the only notable cases in which press reports have threatened the national security occurred when the Bush administration itself leaked compromising information to chosen journalists or news outlets. One instance was the leak to columnist Robert Novak of Valerie Plame's identity as an undercover CIA operative. Another was the administration's recent passing of an al Qaeda video obtained by a private intelligence-gathering organization to Fox News, an action the private intelligence agency said damaged information-gathering structures that had take years to put in place.
Meanwhile it's clear that journalism has become a riskier business than it used to be in the U.S., the country that prides itself not only on supporting but on having virtually created freedom of the press. Last week Michael Lacy and Jim Larkin, executives with Village Voice Media — a company that owns a number of alternative weeklies, including The Village Voice and the Phoenix New Times — were arrested in Phoenix by Sheriff Joe Arpaio for printing a story about how they had been served subpoenas in a grand jury investigation (printing "grand jury secrets" is a misdemeanor in Arpaio's fiefdom; Arpaio himself is notorious for his brutal treatment of inmates in his jail). Reportedly Arpaio, a conservative who introduced Mitt Romney when the presidential candidate made an appearance at Arizona Republican headquarters in Phoenix last spring, was angry at New Times for carrying investigative articles about his treatment of inmates and his real estate dealings.
The subpoenas Arpaio's department issued demanded "all documents related to articles and other content published by Phoenix New Times newspaper in print and on the Phoenix New Times website, regarding Sheriff Joe Arpaio from January 1, 2004 to the present." Also subpoenaed was information about who visited the New Times on line and what other websites they visited before hitting the New Times site.
The New Times incident has to do with a county feud, not with the federal justice system. But a climate that encourages such action has been fostered by the Bush administration, which treats journalists except those working for Fox as necessary evils at best—more often as kids to be collared and dragged to the woodshed.
The president constantly repeats the phrase "protect the American people." Now once again he invokes the national security to justify jeopardizing the confidentiality that makes it possible for reporters to get important stories—in many cases, stories critical of the government.
Voices from history warn against self-styled protectors, as in this line from Plato's Republic: "This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears above ground he is a protector." British comedian Terry Jones harks back to Julius Caesar's proclaiming himself Protector of the Gauls: "By the time he'd finished protecting them, a million Gauls were dead, another million enslaved and Julius Caesar owned most of Gaul."
