I understand all the media arguments against requiring reporters to give evidence to under subpoena like every other American citizen -- it is based upon the notion that the First Amendment makes the self-defined "press" some sort of aristocratic elite that isn't bound by the same rules as the riff-raff -- read that "other Americans".

So listening to them whining is simply music to my ears.

ournalism groups on Saturday decried the jailing of a video journalist and other recent court rulings pressuring media workers to divulge information to the government.

The news media becomes an information-gathering arm of law enforcement when journalists are ordered to give up confidential sources or unpublished material, said Tony Overman, president of the National Press Photographers Association.

"When news sources believe that statements or actions observed or reported by journalists find their way into the hands of police or prosecutors, those sources will be less willing - or flat-out afraid - to cooperate with the media," Overman said at a news conference.

The photographers association and the Society of Professional Journalists announced they would help pay for the legal defense of freelance video journalist Joshua Wolf.

A federal judge in San Francisco ordered Wolf jailed this week for refusing to hand over unaired video shot during a July 2005 protest in which a police car was vandalized and an officer injured.

If my wife had such photos, nobody would bat an eyelash if a court ordered her to turn them over. If I, an "independent journalist and commentator of the new media" (AKA a blogger) had such photos, the courts would surely have the authority to order me to hand them to the authorities on pain of imprisonment. Why should Josh Wolf be exempt from the duty to obey a lawful court order to produce materials relevant to an investigation -- especially after the federal courts have repeatedly and definitively determined that the First Amendment grants no exemption from such obligations?

Similarly, in the Judith Miller cas, why should she have been exempt. If she had not been a reporter for the NY Times, but rather had been Scooter Libby's third cousin four times removed, nobody would have argued that she had a right to defy a lawful court order.

Of course, tehre is this arrogant claim from professional journalist groups.

"We must stand together as journalists, scholars, educators and American citizens for freedom of the press, on behalf of our country," said Julianne Newton, a professor at the University of Oregon's journalism school.

Freedom of the press, Ms. Newton, is the right to write and publish. It is not the right to withhold evidence or obstruct justice. Indeed, just as the right to freedom of the press does not adhere only to "professional journalists" (an oxymoron if there ever was one) but to every American, so too does the obligation to produce evidence fall upon every American -- journalists included. And particularly in cases where the illicit disclosure of information to journalists is th matter under investigation, the obligation is that much more clear.

But an option does remain. Journalists could stat claiming their rights under the Fifth Amendment, implicitly acknowledging that, in many cases, they are accessories to (if not direct perpetrators of) the crimes being investigated.

Posted by: Greg at 02:59 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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