If one were to ask people what they thought were the most important news stories of this week, then they would probably point to Hurricane Katrina, the scandal over the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, or maybe the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Judge John G. Roberts, Jr. Very few would mention the 72-day incarceration of The New York Times reporter Judith Miller for refusing to testify in the investigation of who leaked the name of a covert CIA operative to columnist Robert Novak.
Most of the few who would sit on The New York Times editorial board. Guess whose corner they're in?
This past Monday, The New York Times, as it occasionally does, once again took up Ms. Miller's cause, portraying her as a martyr sacrificing herself for the freedom of the press. Rather than trumpeting the fact that Ms. Miller never wrote a story regarding the covert CIA operative - thereby quashing any crime that would have been committed if she had - The New York Times instead presented the case in a much more historic light, claiming that it now "concerns more than one reporter or one news organization or even one prosecutor's investigation. It increasingly endangers one of the pillars of the nation's freedoms: an unfettered press telling the public what is really going on."
Really? I was not aware that the Bill of Rights guarantees me the freedom to an unfettered press telling me what is really going on. Maybe that is because I have been reading too much of the Bill of Rights and not enough of The New York Times editorial page, seeing as how journalists have been throwing around the First Amendment since Watergate without any real understanding of what freedoms it does and does not guarantee.
The First Amendment, since The New York Times has apparently forgotten, states that "Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." Everyone rightly assumes that "freedom of speech" means the freedom to express an opinion out loud without fear of persecution. Guess what. "Freedom of the press" means the same thing: the freedom to express an opinion without fear of persecution. The only difference? Freedom of speech refers to spoken opinions and freedom of the press to written opinions, such as this column or The New York Times editorial page. It has nothing to do with investigative journalism whatsoever.
Why not? Well, for one thing, investigative journalism did not exist in the time of the Founding Fathers. They did not even have reporters. Their newspapers were completely editorial in nature. Some were blatantly Loyalist and some were proudly Patriot. Later, some were overwhelmingly Federalist and some were unabashedly Anti-Federalist. All they had were editorial pages. The Founding Fathers were concerned with protecting the right to express spoken and written opinions, not the public's right to know. Lest we forget, President James Madison kept a detailed diary of the Constitutional Convention, but he refused to allow its publication until every delegate to the Constitutional Convention had passed away.
Clearly President Madison, the Father of the Constitution and the author of the Bill of Rights, valued the public's right to know.
Of course, The New York Times has to go to bat for an employee. Understandable. That having been said, does every other media outlet have to go to bat for Ms. Miller? I have not heard one journalist express the opinion that maybe - just maybe - they do not have quite as many Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms as they think. Why not? Because to admit that would be to jeopardize their jobs and the corporate interests who make money selling newspapers, advertising and television commercials. The media has been obsessed with gotcha-journalism since Watergate because it sells. Every time a scandal breaks, circulation increases. All The New York Times editorial board and Ms. Miller are doing is trying to find a Constitutional justification for the particular way in which they choose to make a buck.
When President Dwight D. Eisenhower left office, he warned the nation about the military-industrial complex. Because generals want more programs under their control and because defense contractors want to provide those programs at a price, allowing either one any significant influence in budget planning would represent a conflict of interests. When Mr. Novak published the name of a covert CIA operative, he was concerned with the public's presumed right to know something that it should not. His publisher was concerned with circulation. Does anyone really believe that national security concerns figured into their decision to publish? When will we realize that the journalist-corporate complex reveals its own conflict of interests every time that a journalist falls on her sword and an editorial board sings her praises?
John McPike is a sophomore in the School of Public Affairs and College of Arts and Sciences.
