Blabbermouth NYT: Help! Help! Help!
Michelle Malkin
Rebuffed by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the NYTimes puts out a desperate editorial this morning asking someone, anyone--paging Nancy Pelosi!--to help protect them from accountability for protecting illegal leakers and reporters accused of tipping off terrorist charities:
A journalist’s ability to protect the identity of confidential sources has been further eroded by the Supreme Court’s refusal this week to stop a prosecutor from reviewing the telephone records of two New York Times reporters. This is the latest legal blow to the diminishing right of journalists to shield informants who often provide information of great interest and importance but who might be punished if their identities were known.
The "right" the paper claims is neither absolute nor iron-clad (see Branzburg v. Hayes). As for the "great interest and importance" of information that clues terrorist front groups into impending FBI raids, well, even Justice Ginsburg seems not to have bought into the blabbermouth spin. As the Second Circuit Court ruled in this case:
There is...a clear showing of a compelling governmental interest in the investigation, a clear showing of relevant and unique information in the reporters' knowledge, and a clear showing of need. No grand jury can make an informed decision to pursue the investigation further, much less to indict or not indict, without the reporters' evidence. It is therefore not privileged.
That didn't make it into the NYTimes' screed this morning. More of what did:
[T]he Supreme Court, in refusing to intervene, has effectively allowed the prosecutor to search through the records in hopes he can pinpoint the source of the leak.
This is a bad outcome for the press and for the public.
Speak for yourselves.
The appeals court’s disingenuous suggestion that The Times might redact irrelevant records would simply have helped point to possible leakers.
Huh?
The public will be ill served if this case reduces the willingness of officials to reveal important but sensitive information.
Translation: The Times and terrorists will be ill served if the paper can't keep splashing secret and sensitive info undermining the Bush administration's counterterrorism efforts on its front pages. The editorial ends with an S.O.S. to Congress to pass a special federal shield law like the one they wanted passed during the Plame brouhaha. Read Deputy AG Paul McNulty's testimony on it here.
Beldar is back and blogging up a storm about this case ...
