William Safire condemns the SCOTUS decision to let Judy Miller and Matthew Cooper be jailed. He sums up how the prosecution has pursued these two reporters in order to make it appear that they are the reason he has failed to bring a case against the real criminal or criminals in this situation: Robert Novak’s source within the administration who outed a CIA operative:

What evidence of serious crime does he have that makes the testimony of Judith Miller of The New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine so urgent? We don’t know - eight pages of his contempt demand are secret - but some legal minds think he is falling back on the Martha Stewart Theory of Prosecution. That is: if the underlying crime has not been committed, justify the investigation by indicting a big name for giving false information.

Thus, if the reporters resist the coercion of the loss of their freedom, the prosecutor can blame them for his inability to go to trial on the “heavy” charge. But if they cave in, he can get some headlines on the ancillary charge of false statements. (I have known Judy Miller, a superb and intrepid reporter, for a generation; she’ll never betray a source.)

The principle at stake here is the idea of “reportorial privilege,” embraced in shield laws in 49 states and the District of Columbia, but not in federal courts. That privilege not to testify - held by lawyers, members of the clergy, spouses and others - gives assurance to whistleblowers that information confided to a reporter revealing corruption or malfeasance in government will not result in loss of job or more severe retaliation from on high.

I haven’t heard anyone defend this decision, and I can’t even imagine how one would go about doing it.

~The Stuffed Tiger