Those who need anonymity are not only the poor and the powerless, those whose lives or jobs might be in jeopardy if they speak up publicly, but even the powerful," Miller said. "All are entitled to anonymity if they are telling the truth and have something of importance to say to the American people.
--Judith Miller, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on behalf a proposition to shield reporters from having to reveal their sources.
Jesus Christ. Look at that. Ms Miller steps up to the plate on behalf of those most in need of protection--the rich and powerful.
That's really nauseating.
All we have to do to reject Ms Miller's proposed shield law is to look at something in the second half of her statement "...if they are telling the truth..."
They weren't telling the truth about Iraq.
And if she is claiming that Libby and her other source whose name she amazingly can't recall told the truth about Plame being Wilson's wife, well, that little truth is precisely what it was criminal to divulge, and certainly does not constitute an important truth the American people needed to know.
But Miller is not really interested in our taking at face value the truth-plus-importance proviso in her defense of privilege for the rich and powerful--it is a rhetorical gambit that blows that defense out of the water, in fact, if you think about it for a moment. It just sounds good--but on examination, it invalidates the justification she is proposing for shielding her particular sources from public view.
She has in fact unwittingly pinpointed the difference between her source and Deep Throat back in the ancient and heroic days of investigative reporting, that she and all government stovepipes now use to justify their present demeaning of the very concept of investigative reporting. Karl Woodward's source was blowing a whistle on criminality in government. Miller's source was committing a criminal act, and hoping to use Ms Miller as she had been used before, as a willing and able stenographer.
Here is a reporter who was a career-motivated conduit for government lies, who functioned essentially as Rumsfeld's right hand woman in getting us into this depraved war, and who was perhaps as personally responsible as any single individual outside of the government itself, for our having needlessly murdered more than a hundred thousand Iraqis and 2000 (and counting) Americans, and could no more have been ignorant of her reportage being untrue than I am of the world being round, pretending--after she tops off her WMD reportage with outright complicity in Rove and Libby's slime attack on Wilson-- to purity of motive in the protection of the rich and powerful from exposure in a criminal investigation .
Give me a break. Give us all a break.
This quote from Gene Lyons in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette sums it all up admirably:
It wasn’t a whistleblower case at all. It was the exact opposite : the most powerful people in the United States using the press to damage a whistleblower by endangering his wife, something even the Mob won’t do.
And Judith Miller stands on principle, to protect the most powerful people in the United States from exposure as the criminals they are.
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