http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,14173,1588717,00.htmlThe refusal of a New York Times reporter to name a government source put her in jail. But on her release, reports Julian Borger, the US press was reluctant to hail her a heroine
Monday October 10, 2005
The Guardian
All the elements for a grand moral drama were in place. A defiant journalist, frail from months in jail, stood before the cameras on a courtroom's steps proclaiming her readiness to sacrifice herself in the name of press freedom.
Judith Miller had spent more time in prison than any American journalist in history for refusing to give up a source. The diminutive 57-year-old New York Times reporter had sat for 85 days in a Virginia penitentiary, sent there by a prosecutor investigating an intelligence leak that threatens the stability of the Bush White House. Yet when she emerged into the light of the day, only after satisfying herself her source wanted her to testify, the absence of acclaim was embarrassingly evident. Not only did the public not seem to care, most of Miller's fellow journalists ranged from sceptical to downright hostile. Journalism's Joan of Arc stood at the stake and a nation shrugged.
"Journalists and media people here are really distancing themselves from Judith Miller," said Michael Wolff, a media critic for Vanity Fair magazine. Miller's lawyers protested that this lack of solidarity undermined her stand against prosecutorial pressure. Whatever the reason, most legal observers agree that the whole case has done nothing for the cause of journalistic privilege in the US.
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she started out the Praise of the Media now she is turning out to be their worst nightmare!!!
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