 | |||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
 Judith Miller is a former reporter for The New York Times and author of four books on the Middle East, biological weapons and the Holocaust. For information on her prosecution for refusing to reveal sources to federal prosecutors, see the news section of this Web site or the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
 Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War by Judith Miller, William Broad, Stephen Engelberg Simon & Schuster, 2001  God Has Ninety-Nine Names: A Reporter's Journey Through a Militant Middle East by Judith Miller Simon & Schuster, 1996  Created and maintained pro-bono by Joshua Tanzer, web developer and journalist in New York City. • Resume • Web site • Contact |
|
|
|
prosecutors and the press: jailing of reporters chills free flow of information USA Today, May 14, 2007 USA Today Opinion -- Josh Wolf is finally free — after seven months in prison for refusing to let federal agents use him and his videotape as a substitute for their own investigative work. ... Judith Miller, then a reporter for The New York Times, spent 85 days behind bars in 2005 because she refused to respond to pressure from the special prosecutor charged with finding out who was responsible for the public "outing" of CIA officer Valerie Plame. Miller had never written a story on the subject, and it turned out that the special prosecutor knew all along who the initial leaker had been. Original article Was Judith Miller’s Trip to Jail Necessary? New York Law Journal, April 6, 2007 Now that the dust has settled in the I. Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby trial, was it necessary to have put Judith Miller in jail? The answer is no. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald did not need her. He had plenty of other witnesses to convict Mr. Libby without her. He had seven government employees and two journalists (Matt Cooper and Tim Russert) to say Mr. Libby lied. Further, Mr. Fitzgerald knew he had these witnesses before forcing Ms. Miller, against her will, to become an additional one. All these witnesses testified at the grand jury before Ms. Miller was subpoenaed. She was virtually the last. Mr. Fitzgerald should have stopped, looked and listened before provoking a major press controversy by jailing Ms. Miller. But he did not. Original article See "News" Section for Reaction to Libby Verdict ... and post your own perspective ... Judy Speaks at The Peres Center for Peace in Israel Judy recently traveled to Israel to speak at The Peres Center for Peace as part of the Holon "Woman" Festival, an annual celebration held during the week of International Women's Day. Judy was featured in round table discussions attended by Palestinian and Israeli women journalists. The Peres Center for Peace (www.peres-center.org) is a non-governmental non-partisan organization dedicated to promoting peaceful relations between Arabs and Israelis, which publishes a Monthly E-Bulletin. Congress to consider allowing protection of anonymous sources USA Today, March 11, 2007 WASHINGTON — House lawmakers, spurred by recent high-profile cases, plan to reintroduce a bipartisan measure that would allow reporters to protect the identities of confidential sources. Efforts to create a federal shield law failed last session, but supporters say the new Democrat-controlled Congress is likely to renew the push, setting up a battle with the Bush administration, which opposes the legislation. "I'm cautiously optimistic that we're going to be able to put a stitch in this tear in the first amendment," said Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., a co-sponsor of the measure. "It's not about protecting reporters, it's about protecting the public's right to know." House lawmakers plan to introduce the legislation this month. The Senate is expected to follow with a similar bill sponsored by Sens. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Christopher Dodd, D-Conn. The aim is to make sure confidential sources are willing to share information about government corruption or malfeasance, said Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., a lead sponsor, as long as they know their identities will be kept secret. Original article After Libby Trial, New Era for Government and Press The New York Times, March 8, 2007 The investigation and trial of I. Lewis Libby Jr., who was Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, will have many legacies and lessons — for government officials, for supporters and critics of special prosecutors and for historians of the events leading to the war in Iraq. But the institution most transformed by the prosecution, and the one that took the most collateral damage from Patrick J. Fitzgerald’s relentless pursuit of obstruction and perjury charges against Mr. Libby, may have been the press, forced in the end to play a major role in his trial. . . . Original article New, post-Libby goal for media: Staying off the stand The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 7, 2007 WASHINGTON - The conviction of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, based on journalists' testimony, is forcing the rapidly changing media to reexamine how they can gather news without getting forced into court. "The trial has demystified the priestly practices of Washington journalism," said Roy Peter Clark, a senior scholar at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., a school and resource center for working journalists. "I think we'll see prosecutors going after journalists more often." Original article JM in Jail, re. Protecting a Source Jeff Stahler, The Columbus Dispatch Please click on link (we say no more ...) Original article Pence Says Libby Case Shows Need for Media Shield Law Office of U.S. Congressman Mike Pence: 6th District of Indiana Washington, March 7, 2007 - U.S. Congressman Mike Pence today called on Congress to pass a federal media shield law in the wake of the Scooter Libby verdict. Pence's remarks follow: "Mr. Speaker, if there is anything we learned from the conviction of 'Scooter' Libby yesterday, it's that the First Amendment and freedom of the press are still behind bars. "The need for a federal media shield bill has never been more apparent. . . . "It's time to repair the tear in the First Amendment. It's time to pass a federal media shield law. Rep. Rick Boucher and I will be reintroducing the Free Flow of Information Act soon, and I urge this Congress to act on it expeditiously. "Let us free the First Amendment by passing this important legislation. . . ." Original article Supreme Court Turns Down N.Y. Times in Leak Case 1010 WINS, November 27, 2006 WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court ruled against The New York Times on Monday, refusing to block the government from reviewing telephone records of two Times reporters in a leak investigation concerning a terrorism-funding probe. The one-sentence order came in a First Amendment battle that involves stories written in 2001 by Times reporters Judith Miller and Philip Shenon. The stories revealed the government's plans to freeze the assets of two Islamic charities, the Holy Land Foundation and the Global Relief Foundation. Original article The Media Equation >> Subpoenas and the Press The New York Times, November 27, 2006 By David Carr Like the rest of us, Eve Burton, general counsel at the Hearst Corporation was itching to get out the door last Wednesday. Every Thanksgiving, she makes the journey to Chatham Center in upstate New York to make dinner for 10 bachelor farmers in the area, aged 84 and up. Instead, she was stuck at headquarters most of the day, performing what has become a chronic, grinding task: keeping Hearst reporters out of jail. . . . She and the rest of the legal team were finishing an appeal, to be filed this Friday, of a judge’s decision to sentence two San Francisco Chronicle reporters, Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada, to up to 18 months in jail for their refusal to reveal who leaked grand jury information in the Balco steroids case. The underlying case is finished, but District Judge Jeffrey S. White said the reporters belonged in jail for refusing to comply with subpoenas. The appeal hearing will be held on Feb. 12 and the pair faces longer prison terms than any of the actual Balco defendants. "The government is apparently willing to spend three years and millions of dollars putting two reporters in jail," Ms. Burton said. "They won’t get the information they want. These guys made a promise and they are going to keep it." Original article ASSAULT ON PRESS FREEDOM San Francisco Chronicle, November 26, 2006 >> In a nation that preaches the virtues of democracy, the United States government has consistently eroded the media's ability to report and, by extension, undermines the ideals it professes to uphold << By William Bennett Turner Vladimir Posner, the former Soviet journalist, used to claim the press was freer in the Soviet Union than it was in the United States. This was during Glasnost, as the Soviet empire was disintegrating. Posner explained that the government was dysfunctional, so journalists did not have to worry about the official censors, and the media had not been privatized, so journalists were not accountable to commercial sponsors and advertisers. The result was a kind of anarchic freedom. The press was free, but only for a brief window in time. The window in America once was open wide and, I thought, permanently so. I used to tell my students on the first day of class that we had the freest speech and press in the world. I can't do that anymore. Original article Statement From the Society of Professional Journalists on Miller and Cooper Supreme Court Cases AScribe, July 5, 2005 INDIANAPOLIS, July 5 (AScribe Newswire) -- Tomorrow, Wednesday, July 6, at least one and possibly two reporters are likely to be sentenced to spend time in federal prison for resisting the order of a court to testify before a grand jury. The reporters, Judith Miller of The New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time Magazine have refused to testify about the sources to whom they granted anonymity. Cooper's employer, Time, last week agreed to turn over Cooper's notes as demanded by the court. The Newspaper Guild has asked industry workers to pause and stand for two minutes of silence at noon on Wednesday. In addition, the Guild has asked its local unions to conduct one-hour vigils outside Federal Courthouses. Original article Journalists Say Threat of Subpoena Intensifies New York Times, July 4, 2005 By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE In 1991, when Timothy Phelps, a reporter for Newsday, and Nina Totenberg, a reporter for National Public Radio, broke the news that Anita Hill had accused Clarence Thomas, then a Supreme Court nominee, of sexual harassment, a special Senate counsel tried to subpoena the reporters' telephone records to unmask their confidential source. The accusations prompted a second round of highly contentious confirmation hearings, but Senate leaders ultimately refused to give the special counsel permission to pursue the records, and eventually the matter was dropped. Mr. Phelps, who is now Newsday's bureau chief in Washington, recalled his case last week after two courts, including the Supreme Court, ruled in two similar cases against journalists. "We seemed to have pretty solid support for the stand we took, from the journalistic community, the legal community, the human rights community, the public," he said. "And I don't sense as much of that today, even in the journalistic community. The legal atmosphere, the corporate atmosphere, and the public atmosphere has changed." Lawyers for the news media say that the legal climate for those seeking to protect confidential sources is turning chillier, with more subpoenas being issued to reporters. There is no database that tracks such subpoenas, and some prosecutors dispute that they are on the rise. But a series of high-profile cases involving confidential sources has the news media on edge. "It does feel like open season," said Laura Handman, a First Amendment lawyer based in Washington. "There are more instances of courts ordering confidential sources to be disclosed," she said, adding that she believed the Bush administration's emphasis on secrecy was partly to blame. "This leads to more leak inquiries, which, in turn, leads to more subpoenas." In the last year, more than two dozen reporters across the country have been subpoenaed or questioned about their confidential sources in cases before federal courts, according to the Newspaper Association of America. Paul J. Boyle, senior vice president of the association, said he believed that "the filing of subpoenas, as well as the letters and phone calls that media companies receive from prosecutors and civil litigants, is on the rise." Kurt Wimmer, a media lawyer whose firm, Covington & Burling, represents 45 television stations in 40 states, said he had as many subpoenas against reporters in the first three months of this year as he had in all of last year. He said those subpoenas were largely inspired by the looming prospect over the last several months that Judith Miller of The New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine would go to jail for refusing to testify in a grand jury investigation into the disclosure of the identity of a covert C.I.A. operative, Valerie Plame. The Supreme Court last week declined to hear the reporters' appeal, intensifying one of the biggest clashes between the news media and the courts in a generation. "When the Supreme Court says there's nothing wrong with forcing reporters to testify and go to jail, other lawyers are looking at that and saying, 'Why shouldn't I subpoena a reporter?' " Mr. Wimmer said. Others doubt that there have been more subpoenas recently, saying it may just seem that way because a handful of cases have become so prominent. They say that regardless of the numbers, there is nothing wrong with pursuing justice if a reporter has been manipulated by a source and published misleading information. In another case last week, a federal appeals court in Washington upheld contempt orders against four reporters who had refused to disclose their confidential sources to Wen Ho Lee, an atomic scientist who had been suspected of passing secrets to the Chinese but pleaded guilty to a lesser charge. He is suing the government for giving information about him to those reporters, violating his privacy. Brian A. Sun, a Los Angeles lawyer who represents Dr. Lee, said that while he did not see more subpoenas, just more publicity about them, he agreed that the Miller-Cooper case "could encourage other prosecutors to utilize the tools that they have had available to them." In Mr. Sun's view, what is behind these cases are leakers who have "less than altruistic motives" and are using reporters, while those reporters in turn are looking to break a big story. The heightened interest in national security issues since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has drawn attention to some cases, said Martin London, a New York lawyer who has litigated several media cases and subpoenaed nearly a dozen reporters in 1972 on behalf of Spiro T. Agnew, the former vice president. At the same time, he said, high-profile scandals at various news organizations, including The New York Times and CBS News, have undermined confidence in the news media. "I don't buy that there is any increase in subpoenas," Mr. London said. "The Miller-Cooper case is very unusual, it has a lot of wrinkles that are just sort of extraordinary. But it's perfectly reasonable in a post-9/11 world for the government to be concerned about the security of C.I.A. information." John Nowacki, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said the department would not comment on the use of subpoenas against reporters. Mr. Boyle and others said there was a change after a 2003 ruling written by Richard Posner, an influential federal appeals court judge in Chicago, who said that lower courts had been misreading a 1972 Supreme Court decision, Branzburg v. Hayes. That case in fact rejected the idea of First Amendment protections for reporters, but media lawyers over three decades managed to convince judges otherwise. "He seems to have freed some of his colleagues to pull back on the privilege," said Sandra Baron, executive director of the Media Law Resource Center. Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the Miller-Cooper case, has served as something of a role model for those who are seeking information from reporters. Mr. Fitzgerald has employed a technique based on the idea that if a source no longer requires confidentiality, the reporter's pledge to keep it is moot. He has sought and obtained waivers from suspected sources releasing reporters of their confidentiality agreements, making it harder for reporters to claim they are bound by a pledge not to talk. Through this approach, Mr. Fitzgerald obtained at least limited testimony from journalists including Tim Russert of NBC, Walter Pincus of The Washington Post and Mr. Cooper. Mr. Cooper was subpoenaed again and refused to testify, although Time Inc. has turned over his notes to the prosecutor, a decision with which Mr. Cooper said he disagreed. Mr. Cooper and Ms. Miller face another court hearing Wednesday to learn their fates. Mr. Phelps, for one, lamented this turn of events and said it was only likely to chill potential sources in the future. "The fact that some news organizations have cooperated in this case is going to put a little seed of doubt in people's minds about whether they can really depend on reporters or not," he said. And there is a rising concern among reporters that those people might be right. "The biggest fear that most reporters have now is not having their mail taken or their phone records taken without their being told," said John Solomon, who oversees investigative reporting for the Associated Press and who had both of those things happen to him, in 2002 and 2001, respectively. "The biggest concern is that they'll write about something and will be forced to talk about it." Representative Mike Pence, the Indiana Republican who is pushing, so far unsuccessfully, for Congress to pass a federal law to protect journalists, said that fear was justified. "No reporter, as the law has evolved in the last 30 years, can give absolute assurance to any source that at no time will their identity be disclosed," he said. In addition to the Lee and Miller-Cooper cases, there have been several other high-profile cases involving confidential sources. Jim Taricani, a reporter with WJAR, a television station in Providence, R.I., refused to reveal the identity of the person who leaked him an F.B.I. videotape of a politician taking a bribe. He was sentenced to six months of home detention in December and was released after four months. Nine news organizations have been subpoenaed in the case involving Steven J. Hatfill, a scientist, who sued federal officials under the privacy act for naming him as a "person of interest" in the 2001 anthrax investigations. As many as 100 federal agents have waived any confidentiality agreements they had with the media in that case. Ms. Miller of The New York Times and a colleague, Philip Shenon, are under subpoena for their phone records by a grand jury investigating the leak of information about a planned F.B.I. raid on an Islamic charity suspected of funding terrorism. In February, a federal district judge in New York held that the reporters had a right to keep their phone records confidential. The cases come as polls show the public has a deepening distrust of the news media, although a study by the Pew Research Center last month found that 76 percent of Americans think the use of confidential sources is at least sometimes justified. Michael Getler, the ombudsman for The Washington Post, cautioned between linking what he agrees is a rise in the number of legal proceedings over sources and the low regard in which the news media is held. "There clearly is a more widespread ideological assault from both sides on the press these days, and that may well be feeding some of the prosecutorial zeal," he said. "But I don't know that that is really the case. I don't think we know enough to say exactly what is driving individual prosecutors." Original article No justice in government jailing reporters Sonoma Index-Tribune, July 5, 2005 While Judith Miller of The New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine are not the only targets of the federal government's attempt to bring the press to heel by threatening to jail reporters who don't reveal their sources, they are the ones in the news right now. The case involves the disclosure of the identity of a CIA agent by columnist Mike Novak and the subsequent efforts to find out who "outed" the agent. Cooper wrote an article about the subject. Miller did not, but she apparently was working on such an article. Nobody knows why Novak, who started it all, is not also a target of the government's wrath. The prosecutor claims that he wants to find out who in the federal administration leaked the information, and a federal judge is supporting his efforts by threatening the two reporters with jail time and fines if they don't reveal their sources and sing for the grand jury. Original article First Amendment resources Materials from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (rcfp.org), used by permission. Shield law
SPECIAL REPORT Reporters and Federal Subpoenas As reporters facing contempt charges in a number of federal cases around the country, Congress is taking its first serious look at a reporter's shield law in decades. Current as of: 4/19/05 This year is shaping up to be a critical year for the reporter's privilege. Both houses of congress are looking at shield law bills, the D.C. Circuit has found no privilege protects journalists before grand juries, and a Rhode Island journalist sits under home confinement for criminal contempt of court for not revealing a source. At least nine journalists face sanctions for refusing to obey court orders to reveal their sources and more may follow. This page is meant to keep journalists up to date on the federal shield law effort and the other legal controversies involving reporters' subpoenas. If you have any additional information or updates, please let us know. Jump to RCFP resources on the issues below:
Federal shield law efforts Identical bills in the House and Senate would both give journalists an absolute privilege in protecting the identities of confidential sources. H.R. 581 was sponsored by Reps. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) and Rick Boucher (D-Va.). S. 340 was subsequently introduced by Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.). Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) has also introduced a reporter's shield bill (S. 369) -- while also signing on as a co-sponsor of the Lugar bill. Dodd had also introduced a bill late in the last congress, but no action was taken. What the bills say. Pence (H.R. 581) and Lugar (S. 340) bills. Confidential sources: Sources are protected by an absolute privilege -- meaning the right to keep the source's name can not be overcome by the subpoenaing party under any circumstances. Other information: protected by a qualified privilege -- subpoenaing parties can demand information from reporters if they show, by "clear and convincing evidence" and after giving the reporter "notice and an opportunity to be heard" in court, that they have unsuccessfully attempted to obtain the information "from all persons from which such testimony or document could reasonably be obtained" and (1) in criminal cases, that "(i) there are reasonable grounds to believe that a crime has occurred; and (ii) the testimony or document sought is essential to the investigation, prosecution, or defense" or (2) in other cases, that "the testimony or document sought is essential to a dispositive issue of substantial importance" to the case. Third party records: The bills protect journalists' third-party records, such as telephone records and e-mail, to the same extent as material held by journalists, and further requires that journalists be notified before such subpoenas are issued and be given an opportunity to contest them before the time the records must be turned over. Who is covered: The bills would cover publishers, broadcasters and wire services and those who work for them. The definition would include freelance journalists who are working for a publisher or broadcaster, but not those without contracts or those who publish solely on the Web. To quote the bill, covered person means: (A) an entity that disseminates information by print, broadcast, cable, satellite, mechanical, photographic, electronic, or other means and that (i) publishes a newspaper, book, magazine, or other periodical; (ii) operates a radio or television broadcast station (or network of such stations), cable system, or satellite carrier, or a channel or programming service for any such station, network, system, or carrier; or (iii) operates a news agency or wire service; (B) a parent, subsidiary, or affiliate of such an entity; or (C) an employee, contractor, or other person who gathers, edits, photographs, records, prepares, or disseminates news or information for such an entity.
Dodd bill (S. 369) Confidential sources: The bill would provide an absolute privilege from disclosing sources whether they are promised confidentiality or not. Other information: The bill would provide a limited or qualified privilege to withhold other information. The privilege could be overcome if a court "finds, after providing notice and an opportunity to be heard to the person or entity from whom the news or information is sought, that the party seeking the news or information established by clear and convincing evidence that (1) the news or information is critical and necessary to the resolution of a significant legal issue before an entity of the judicial, legislative, or executive branch of the Federal Government that has the power to issue a subpoena; (2) the news or information could not be obtained by any alternative means; and (3) there is an overriding public interest in the disclosure." Who is covered:Here, the Dodd bill differs from the Pense-Lugar bills, and provides coverage to a wider class of journalists. The act applies to a "covered person who is providing or has provided services for the news media." A covered person is a person who "(A) engages in the gathering of news or information; and (B) has the intent, at the beginning of the process of gathering news or information, to disseminate the news or information to the public." News media is broadly defined as a newspaper, a magazine, a journal or other periodical, radio, television, press associations, news agencies, wire services, or "any printed, photographic, mechanical, or electronic means of disseminating news or information to the public." The last provision makes clear that Web-only news sites would be covered. Current status: H.R. 581 was introduced on Feb. 2 and referred to Committee on the Judiciary. No further action has been taken. S. 340 was introduced on Feb. 9 and referred to Committee on the Judiciary. No further action has been taken. S. 369 was introduced on Feb. 14. No further action has been taken. Sponsors: H.R. 581: Mike Pence (R-Ind.); S. 340: Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.); S. 369: Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.). Bill status and tracking through Library of Congress' Thomas system, including Congressional Record references: News links: 2/10/05: Shield bill introduced in Senate 2/2/05: Reporter's shield bill introduced in House 11/22/04: Federal reporter's shield law proposed Other links: | |||||||
|
|||||||||||
