wouldn't that be convienient to only give protection to corporate media.
interesting
MILLER,YOU SLY ANTI-INTERNET MARTYR!
Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - FreeMarketNews.com
Did Judith Millers jail time set up Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indianas
shield law? In the wake of mounting puzzlement over why New York Times reporter
Judith Miller went to jail for almost three months, some free-market thinkers
have concluded that one possibility is to provide Washington and mainstream
media like the New York Times with a convenient martyr to hasten certain media
legislation. As it so happens, such legislation is indeed in the works in the
form of a press "shield bill" to ensure members of the press do not go to jail
just for protecting their sources. The legislation is being co-sponsored by
powerful Republican Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana - but there is a catch. In
addition to helping reporters avoid jail, it will basically allow the U.S.
government in league with Big Media to virtually license who can and cannot
wield the power of the press. Lugar is already on record as saying most "blogs"
won't be given the same kind of recognition as "classic"
press, at least not in full, so Miller's martyrdom - if that's what it was -
may already be reaping rewards.
There are plenty of reasons why powerful forces in the United States want
legislation aimed at the Internet. The mainstream press is coming under
enormous attack from Net reporting which allows users to scoop the static
once-a-day newspapers of record on virtually a minute-by-minute basis if
necessary. At the same time, the nations political system is under attack as
well from bloggers and other Net commentators who can quickly fathom motives
and tell a story that can be transmitted around the world in an instant.
Politicians looking at what has happened to Bush after Katrina and recalling
what happened to Clinton, must certainly be as fearful of the Internet as the
mainstream press.
With both the bureaucracy and the mainstream media holding similar feelings
about the Net all that was needed, possibly, was a trigger. Thats where Miller
comes in. But why would Judith Miller go to jail to provide grist, at least
partially, for Lugars bill? For one thing, there is her employer, the New York
Times. She has called her supervision at the paper minimal and has reportedly
referred to herself as Miss Run Amok. Indeed the New York Times does seem to
treat her delicately; and she has also has received special status from the
U.S. government as she herself recounted in a Times story published Sunday, as
follows, During the Iraq war, the Pentagon had given me clearance to see
secret information as part of my assignment embedded with a special military
unit hunting for unconventional weapons.
Miller seems capable of generating close relationships with powerful men, no
small talent. In remarks about the legislation made to Editor and Publisher
(Oct 10), Lugar himself was candid about his affection for Miller, stating,
"I've known Judy Miller for many years," and adding, according to the
publication, that they became close when she was reporting on his efforts to
dismantle the former Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal. Miller also seems to have
had extraordinarily close relationships with at least one of the Bush
administrations most powerful figures, Vice-President Cheney's chief-of-staff
"Scooter" Libby - a source of hers, and one for whom she apparently went to
jail. Libby ends his letter as follows, You went into jail in the summer. It
is fall now. You will have stories to coverIraqi elections and suicide
bombers, biological threats and the Iranian nuclear program. Out West, where
you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters,
because their
roots connect them. Come back to work - and life. Until then, you will remain
in my thoughts and prayers. Libbys letter is odd not only for its tone but
also because of reports that he was willing to let her testify if she had only
asked. And given the tone of the letter it is difficult to see why she didnt.
Unless she wanted to go to jail, or was doing it to please her employer, or
Scooter Libby and the Bush administration, or all of them and Lugar too. The
New York Times has used the power of its pen to benefit its purse before. Not
many months ago, on its editorial page it began a furious campaign against a
large downtown Manhattan building project with plenty of office space, only to
have it come out that the Times was building a new uptown headquarters and its
business people were worried the space would not rent if too much other
property was available.
Back on June 22, about three months before Lugar formally announced the Shield
bill he was co-sponsoring, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., Chairman of The New York
Times Company made a speech to Times shareholders at the Metropolitan Club, in
which he talked about Miller's courageous struggle, then suprisingly brought up
Lugar's shield bill as follows: I urge all of you to throw your support behind
a bi-partisan federal shield law introduced by Senator Richard Lugar and
Congressmen Mike Pence and Rick Boucher within the strictures of a
journalistic ethics policy, of course.
Their bill, The Free Flow of
Information Act, is based on Department of Justice guidelines that have been
in place for over 30 years in fact they were instituted during the Nixon
presidency. These guidelines strike a balance between the public interest in
the free dissemination of information and the public's interest in the fair and
effective administration of justice.
With the above remarks, before it was certain Miller would go to jail and well
before most knew of the Shield bill which would only be announced perhaps three
months later, Sulzberger seems to be setting the table for what would happen,
positioning Miller as a martyr and linking her martyrdom specifically to
Lugars bill. The evidence is circumstantial to be sure, and other compelling
reasons could emerge that would render the above scenario fairly
inconsequential, or even show it false. (And it should be pointed out that the
Times has been emphatic that the decision to go to jail was Millers and
Millers alone.) Yet sometimes the simplest explanations are the most accurate.
And there are at least a few free-market thinkers who will be very interested
to see where Millers career goes from here.
staff reports - Free-Market News Network
Thomas "Rocky" Costanzo
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WHO IS JOHN GALT?
Politics: 'Poli' in Latin meaning 'many' and 'tics' meaning 'bloodsucking
creatures'.
"Those that seek the truth are more than friends. They are brothers."
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