Free Republic

After the latest widely-publicized stories in national newspapers about weapons from Iran allegedly killing Americans in Iraq -- based completely on unnamed sources -- at least one smaller news outlet has had enough of it. The news director of the public radio station in Santa Fe, New Mexico, has directed his staff to "ignore national stories quoting unnamed sources." He also called on other news outlets to join this policy. Bill Dupuy sent the following to his news staff. * Effectively immediately and until further notice, it is the policy of KSFR's news department to ignore and not repeat any...

WASHINGTON - Three prominent journalists testified Monday that Bush administration officials volunteered leaks about a CIA operative, as I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's attorneys sought to suggest he was not responsible for exposing her. The jury in Libby's perjury trial heard a 66-second snippet of one of the deep background interviews given to Washington Post editor Bob Woodward for use in one of his books. They also saw a parade of Pulitzer-prize winning journalists discuss who did and did not leak the information that set off a scandal and ultimately brought Libby to trial. Woodward, who never wrote about Plame, and...

You have got to read what's in these links. Very interesting pointers to where some of the Dim-Foley machinations have been coming from Go down to post titles "good news bad news" at http://blogactive.com/ then after reading the original post, click on the comments some eye openers

I wanted to give credit where credit is due. Also on tap: our successful anti-missile tests and North Korean reaction to same. Last but not least, the ever-popular Ayman Zawahiri and his new sidekick American - raised Adam Gadahn !

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SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge told two San Francisco Chronicle reporters they must comply with a subpoena and tell a grand jury who leaked them secret testimony of Barry Bonds and other elite athletes ensnared in the government's steroid probe. The decision by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White means reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada must appear before a grand jury investigating the leak unless a higher court blocks the ruling. The pair have said they would not testify and would go to jail rather than reveal their source or sources.

WASHINGTON, August 4, 2006 – Violence in Iraq stems from several difference sources, and U.S., coalition and Iraqi forces there often find attacks difficult to classify, a combat commander in Diyala province said today. “The types of violence we see range everything from improvised explosive devices to assassination to plain out murders, but also some level of kidnapping,” Army Col. Brian D. Jones, commander of 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, said. Jones explained to Pentagon reporters via a satellite link that colliding interests in Diyala province make it “difficult to classify what's being conducted by insurgents as...

Leslie Cauley, the USA Today reporter who last week “broke” the news that three major U.S. telecommunications companies were assisting the National Security Agency in building a database to more easily track any communications by potential terrorists, is listed as a donor to former House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt... A search found a listing for "writer and journalist" Leslie Cauley, indicating she gave $2,000 to Gephardt on June 30, 2003, when Gephardt was running for the Democratic presidential nomination. And that seems not to be her only tie to Democratic politics ... Cauley's link to a Democratic campaign seems likely...

In a filing Thursday at U.S. District Court in the I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby CIA/Leak case, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald -- in a 19-page affidavit -- offered few clues about the identity of the official or officials involved in the leak of former CIA employee, Valerie Wilson Plame's name to reporters, other than Libby himself. Libby, a former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, was indicted last year on charges that he lied about how he learned Plame’s identity and when he told reporters. The affidavit does not unravel the mystery of who Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward's "official"...

Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was back in court seeking information about the New York Times' anonymous sources on Monday, this time appealing his setback in a lower court. Fitzgerald is best known for being the special prosecutor whose investigation led to the indictment of Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Former Times reporter Judith Miller spent 85 days in jail in that case last year for resisting Fitzgerald's request to reveal her sources, and the two have been pitted against each other once again in a free-speech battle over journalists' rights to keep their sources secret from...

WASHINGTON - House and Senate negotiators struck a tentative deal on the expiring Patriot Act that would curb FBI subpoena power and require the Justice Department to more fully report its secret requests for information about ordinary people, according to officials involved in the talks. The agreement, which would make most provisions of the existing law permanent, was reached just before dawn Wednesday. But by midmorning GOP leaders had already made plans for a House vote on Thursday and a Senate vote by the end of the week. That would put the centerpiece of President Bush's war on terror on...

Defrocking the Priesthood of the Press http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/jonahgoldberg/2005/10/26/172903.html As someone who makes a lavish living in the First Amendment industry ("Jeeves! More imitation Cheez-Wiz on this cracker!"), I might be expected to subscribe to the fashionable, enlightened, extend-your-pinky-to-drink-tea position on free speech issues. What position is that? That members of the Fourth Estate constitute a priestly class with special powers and privileges not held by the Great Unwashed. The thinking goes that, in order to do their jobs well, journalists need special exemption from testifying before courts and grand juries - an obligation that holds for everybody else. The truth is,...

Big-Name Journalists Spar Over Sources at NYC Gathering Wed Aug 17, 6:35 PM ET From l., panelists Richard Cohen (Washington Post), Nicholas Lemann (Columbia), First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams and Time honcho Norman Pearlstine NEW YORK This morning, Court TV gathered a group of columnists, editors, attorneys, and academics to discuss the rule of the law vs. the rule of journalism" at the popular media haunt Michael's in mid-town New York. With panelists Norman Pearlstine, Floyd Abrams, Nicholas Lemann, Richard Cohen, Michael Goodwin, Michael Wolff, Paul Holmes, and moderator Catherine Crier, the allotted hour was barely enough time to kick...

The Bush administration is formally op posing the bipartisan effort on Capitol Hill to enact a federal shield law for journalists, calling it "bad public policy" that would create "serious impediments" to law enforcement. We understand the administration's sensitivity, given the Valerie Plame affair. But that position is just plain wrong. Like other news media organizations, we urged the Supreme Court to hear the appeals of subpoenaed journalists Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper in hopes the justices finally would clarify whether a federal right of confidentiality exists. The court declined — which meant that its last word on the subject,...

As more comes to light about Diane Griego Erwin, the former Sacramento Bee columnist, the more revealing and instructive the story becomes. It is a story we mentioned in a recent Media Monitor, but much more has come to light. In one sense, it is another validation for the New Media, specifically the blogs; and for another, it shines a light on problems related to diversity in the newsrooms, when diversity strictly refers to skin color. It also spells potential big trouble for the Sacramento Bee editor, Rick Rodriguez, the new president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE)....

The truth could very well be that Judith Miller is protecting a "source" all right─ Miller herself. She may have known the truth about Plame all along but didn't write a story because of that fact. So, instead, she passed that information on to the administration. Under ordinary circumstances there is nothing sinister in this. Conversations take place between journalists and officials all the time. This is how the business of journalism is conducted. But when the conversations involve alleged violations of the law, as defined by the Times itself, journalists have a legal obligation to provide evidence. The paper's...

Yesterday, New York Times reporter Judith Miller stood before a federal judge and defied his order to testify before a grand jury. According to the Reuters version of events, a grand jury investigation by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, a Justice Department prosecutor, seeks to determine who "in the Bush administration" leaked the name of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame in 2003 to the media and whether any laws were violated. Right off the bat, one finds a compelling reason for ordering Judith Miller to reveal her sources. Why? Because we don't know if it was someone in the Bush administration...

It has been impossible these past few weeks to pick up a newspaper or turn on the news without being drawn into controversies arising out of confidential press sources. First, there was the Newsweek story, apparently based on a misinformed source, about mistreatment of the Quran at Guantanamo, that plunged that magazine into a violent international controversy. Then, "Deep Throat," the most famous confidential source of all, who guided Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein through the mysteries of Watergate, revealed himself to be Mark Felt, a former deputy director of the FBI. These events have played out against the backdrop...

Newsweek floundered in journalistic purgatory over the weekend, unable to confirm or completely retract the "Periscope" item from its May 9 issue that incensed rioters in Afghanistan and Pakistan; 16 people died in the melees. I wonder why Newsweek wasn't more skeptical about Quran-desecration charges. Muslims so venerate the Quran that they are outraged if anyone touches one without first washing their hands, let alone put it into a dung-hole. Compare the ubiquity of the toilet story with other kinds of Quran desecration. In my Nexis sifting I found only a handful of examples from the last 25 years: A...

* There are a couple of issues which attend to this Newsweek thing. First, there is the First Amendment to the Constitution. For those of us who haven't actually read the First Amendment since 8th Grade Social Studies, here it is: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. * This is a pretty big bag of freedoms in one Amendment. Religion, speech,...