Well, there goes the Press...

Apparently Time Magazine has decided to cave to pressure and turn over notes in the Valerie Plame case in order to keep its reporter out of jail.

Threatening this reporter (along with another one) for allowing an anonymous source to remain anonymous, isn't this a time honored tradition? Haven't we all seen this dance before? The government threatens, the journalist refuses, and eventually the government either caves or puts the journalist in prison, but the Fourth Estate keeps its integrity (and its sources) intact?

But apparently that's eroded too. Don't get me wrong, I would love for the person who leaked the name of a covert CIA operative (even if her posting wasn't quite the "James Bond" style mission it may have been portrayed as) to be brought to justice. Especially at a time when the Administration is so focused on protecting America, sensitive information like that simply should not be leaked, certainly not for so petty a reason as to punish a political oponent.

But this is not the way to go about it. Our country is all about the rules. It's all about the protections. It's about accepting that sometimes we won't win because we can't get there by obeying the rules, and we won't violate those rules.

It's why guilty men sometimes go free, because we consider that a better alternative than to let a mistake allow an innocent one to be falsely imprisoned. And it's why in this case, sad as it may be, the treasonous leaker of classified information and the sad, bitter old man who revealed it in the national media should probably get off scot free. Not because they deserve to, but because the rules tie our hands.

This is a sad day in an otherwise sad time in the journalistic life of our country. Truly, bloggers are now the only ones left to truly get at the stories that need to be told, and they are more biased, have less resources and don't enjoy the same protections. If I, on this blog, revealed something politically inconvenient, I couldn't rely on first amendment journalist protections to keep from revealing my source.

Another fairie lost her wings today.

Copyright (c) June 30, 2005 by Liam Johnson. http://www.liamjohnson.net