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US journos face jail over story
28/06/2005 14:19 - (SA)
Washington - The United States Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear appeals by two top reporters who face prison for refusing to reveal sources in the case of a CIA spy outed during a row over the United States rationale for war in Iraq.
Matthew Cooper of Time magazine and Judith Miller of The New York Times now face up to 18 months in jail, after justices declined to examine a decision by a lower court that they be held in contempt.
The pair had argued that press freedom guarantees in the US Constitution shielded them from having to reveal their sources to a federal grand jury probing how the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame was leaked to a newspaper.
The Supreme Court decision, announced without comment in line with custom, dismayed the journalists, their publications and press freedom groups.
"I am extremely disappointed," Miller said in a statement. Miller never actually wrote about the Plame affair but is believed to have gathered information for a story.
"Journalists simply cannot do their jobs without being able to commit to sources that they won't be identified. Such protection is critical to the free flow of information in a democracy," she said.
Miller's employer, Arthur Sulzberger jun, publisher of The New York Times, also immediately sprung to her defence.
"It is shocking that for doing some routine newsgathering on an important public issue, keeping her word to her sources, and without our even publishing a story about the CIA agent, Judy finds herself facing a prison sentence."
Time Inc also said it was disappointed.
Reporters Without Borders lambasted the decision as "retrograde and freedom-curtailing" and said it foretold "defeat for all media and for the journalism profession."
Rick Dunham, president of Washington's National Press Club, said it was a sad day when American journalists "face jail for doing their jobs" and worried media independence could be compromised.
The case will now go back to US District Court Judge Thomas Hogan, who ordered the journalists imprisoned in October 2004.
The DC Circuit Court of Appeals declined to hear their appeals against that ruling, prompting them to try the Supreme Court as a last resort.
Time magazine said that the two reporters would ask Hogan to reassess the case, arguing that the circumstances have changed since his original ruling. The information appeared after Plame's husband, former US ambassador to Iraq Joseph Wilson, wrote an article for the New York Times countering a White House claim that Iraq had once sought "yellowcake" uranium from Niger.
Wilson has claimed his wife's name was leaked as punishment for his contradiction of President George W Bush's assertion in the 2003 State of the Union address that, "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
- AFP
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