News War

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/newswar/view/

In this very timely and first of a series called News War, Frontline uses the “Plamegate” ordeal, the jailing of Judith Miller, and the current Scooter Libby case to discuss reporter’s privilege. Not only that, but also how our government can use and did use the news in it’s run up to the war in Iraq and to sell to the public the need to topple Saddam Hussein.
The New York Times and many other major publications have a very limited ability to access the intelligence community, due the lack of national security reporters and bureaus internationally. The intelligence that the NYT reporters (Judith Miller) were using in their stories, that supported the war, was coming directly from the Bush administration. In turn, people like Cheney who gave the information to the reporters, would turn around and reference these stories on programs like Meet the Press as if the NYT had gathered this information from independent sources. Not surprising, but appalling nevertheless.
This is appalling not just because of the employment of these sinister tactics by the Bush administration, but because the NYT and Judith Miller seem to have been complicit in this.
The bigger question is whether Miller went to jail on principle, to protect her confidential source, or to protect the Bush administration, which was her source. If it is the latter, and I tend to believe it is, it confirms one of the important messages in this program. Before and during Watergate, confidentiality was used as a tool, by journalists, to coax their potential sources to give up information. Now confidentiality can be a condition imposed on the reporter by the source to spin a story. The D.C. elite and elite media hand in hand manipulating the public. No wonder there’s a major credibility problem in journalism today.