I was beat by SusanG on this at dKos, here is her diary.
Is this political stunt that was once meant to hide the mis-intelligence of the Iraq war becoming a way to scare reporters and the media? The Cleveland Plain Dealer is holding evidence from the public because it fears “penalties against the paper and the jailing of reporters.“
The editor of The Cleveland Plain Dealer said last night that the newspaper, acting on the advice of its lawyers, was withholding publication of two major investigative articles because they were based on illegally leaked documents and could lead to penalties against the paper and the jailing of reporters.
The editor, Doug Clifton, said lawyers for The Plain Dealer had concluded that the newspaper, Ohio’s largest daily, would probably be found culpable if the authorities were to investigate the leaks and that reporters might be forced to identify confidential sources to a grand jury or go to jail.
My immediate question is what is the top secret story this leak pertains to? Does it involve coins? Second is what is happening to our media? And why is our government doing this? (I know why, it’s not really a question)
It sounds like this editor is feed up.
“Take away a reporter’s ability to protect a tipster’s anonymity and you deny the public vital information,” Mr. Clifton wrote. And to dramatize the point, he concluded his column by telling readers that The Plain Dealer was itself obliged to withhold stories based on illegal disclosures for fear of the legal consequences.
“As I write this, two stories of profound importance languish in our hands,” Mr. Clifton wrote. “The public would be well-served to know them, but both are based on documents leaked to us by people who would face deep trouble for having leaked them. Publishing the stories would almost certainly lead to a leak investigation and the ultimate choice: talk or go to jail. Because talking isn’t an option and jail is too high a price to pay, these two stories will go untold for now. How many more are out there?”
Mr. Clifton said he was surprised that there had been so little public reaction to his disclosure of “something that newspapers typically don’t reveal – that real live news had been stifled.”
“I hoped the public would be bothered by that,” he said.
Well, I am.
And this is a direct result of Judy Miller’s vacation, provided by bushCo.
Update [2005-7-9 12:48:36 by hfiend]: E&P talks of the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the CIA leak.
Lawyers for the Newhouse Newspapers-owned PD have concluded that the newspaper would almost certainly be found culpable if the leaks were investigated by authorities.
“They’ve said, this is a super, super high-risk endeavor, and you would, you know, you’d lose,” Clifton said in an interview Friday afternoon.
“The reporters say, ‘Well, we’re willing to go to jail, and I’m willing to go to jail if it gets laid on me,'” Clifton added, “but the newspaper isn’t willing to go to jail. That’s what the lawyers have told us. So this is a Time Inc. sort of situation.”
…
Clifton declined to characterize the two stories, saying only they were based on material that was illegally leaked.Clifton’s revelation that the PD was holding two investigative projects was actually first published in a column he wrote June 30 about the Miller and Cooper case. While the column garnered positive reaction, he said, almost nobody picked up on the disclosure tucked into the end of the piece.
