Friday, October 15, 2004

Due Process of Law

Jeff Jarvis asks "Would you go to jail for your weblog?" It's a long post about the case of Judith Miller of The New York Times, who's been jailed for contempt in her refusal to name sources in the Valerie Plame case. Jarvis wants to make Miller's plight into a First Amendment case. It's not that at all, as I said in my comment to Jarvis's post:
There's no freedom of speech or freedom of the press issue here. What's at stake is due process of law, and that's what Miller and her ilk are trying to subvert.
Someone -- presumably a government official -- may have committed a crime. The press has no right to thwart the investigation of a crime.