BeldarBlog

Memo to Mr. Okrent, in response to your latest NYT column on media bias and performance

TO:	Daniel Okrent, Public Editor of the New York Times
FROM:	William J. Dyer (a/k/a Beldar)
RE:	Your latest column

Mr. Okrent, you clearly are a bright and articulate man, and one who's possibly in a job that no single human being could perform adequately.  I think you understand and aspire to the concept of fairness in journalism.  And so I am genuinely sad — for you, for what used to be America's "newspaper of record," and for the public — that you could write a column like the one that appears in Sunday's NYT entitled "How Would Jackson Pollock Cover This Campaign?"  How can a man with a keen enough sense of irony to write this sentence —

A definition of irony: what an ombudsman or public editor must appreciate to survive this campaign.

— then blithely follow it only a few paragraphs later with this one?

Those readers who long for the days of absolutely untinted, nothing-but-the-facts newspapering ought to have an Associated Press ticker installed on the breakfast table.

The Associated Press?!?  Oh, Mr. Okrent, that is indeed laugh-out-loud funny!  How very badly you miss the point. 

The American public will accept less than "absolutely untinted, nothing-but-the-facts newspapering"; there probably has never been such a thing in practice anyway.  But what we're hoping for — and the reason we're so, so disappointed in the New York Times and the mainstream media — is that we don't get "minimally-respectful-of-the-facts newspapering," sir.  We don't get it from the New York Times, and we certainly don't get it from the Associated Press or CBS News.  And we don't want an AP ticker on our breakfast tables — we've got internet-connected PCs, sir, that work far better than a ticker or a teletype from any mainstream media source, or even than a cable- or satellite-TV remote control.

As a consumer of news from multiple sources, sir, and an active member of one of the "new media," the blogosphere, I'm keenly aware of both the strengths and weaknesses of the new media.  One thing we do very well indeed — and yes, I recognize that it's making your job hell, sir — is identify and spotlight the shortcomings of the mainstream media. 

Another thing we do is energize and facilitate the competitive marketplace among mainstream media outlets, so that — to pick an example — when Michael Dobbs of WaPo does a decent job of investigative reporting regarding the events surrounding John Kerry's Bronze Star and Purple Heart-winning activities on the Bay Hap River on 13Mar69, we can ensure that his work gets far more public attention and scrutiny than even WaPo can give it.

But then, sir, when Mr. Dobbs (or his WaPo editors) point him in different directions, toward other stories — instead of following up on the unfollowed leads he's identified that scream for further such investigative reporting — we new media types are stuck, or nearly so.  The Kerry campaign or Kerry historian Doug Brinkley  won't return phone calls from Beldar of BeldarBlog.  The White House doesn't answer email from Josh Marshall.  A particularly enterprising blogger like the one who writes INDC Journal may succeed in waylaying a CBS News correspondent on a Washington street for an impromptu interview about CBS News; a talk radio host may unwittingly set up (and unfortunately, in this particular example, bungle) an on-air confrontation between two key, competing eyewitnesses to the SwiftVets controversies.  But those are, frankly, exceptions.  Mainstream media still have access that new media lack.

So new media, and the public, still need mainstream media to do their fundamental jobs, Mr. Okrent — just to get the facts reported, and reported correctly.  And mainstream media — and very prominently among them, your employer, Mr. Okrent — still need you to do your job, and very frankly, to do it better than you are now.

Consider, Mr. Okrent, a correction like this one in tomorrow's NYT:

Because of an editing error, the What's Doing column on Sept. 26, about Honolulu, misstated the number of rooms at the Halekulani hotel, as did the picture caption. It is 455, not 155.

Your newspaper (and by extention, the mainstream media) cares about correcting the number of hotel rooms in a resort hotel.  But then — after the NYT got wrong, on three successive days, the identities of the parties with whom young John Kerry met when he traveled to Paris in 1970-1971, and then finally issued a belated correction — the Los Angeles Times, days later, makes the exact same error (also belatedly corrected)!  And then neither the NYT or the LAT does any investigative reporting at all about the bigger question of whether young Kerry went to Paris to meet with our nation's wartime enemies more than once!

I'm not talking here about shading, spin, or unconscious bias, sir.  I'm talking about consistenly getting important facts wrong, and simply never getting a great many obviously important facts at all. 

Finally, sir, I am sympathetic to the slings and arrows you endure.  I admire your courage in admitting, as a self-professed Kerry voter next month, the following:

But before I turn over the podium, I do want you to know just how debased the level of discourse has become. When a reporter receives an e-mail message that says, "I hope your kid gets his head blown off in a Republican war," a limit has been passed.

That's what a coward named Steve Schwenk, from San Francisco, wrote to national political correspondent Adam Nagourney several days ago because Nagourney wrote something Schwenk considered (if such a person is capable of consideration) pro-Bush. Some women reporters regularly receive sexual insults and threats. As nasty as critics on the right can get (plenty nasty), the left seems to be winning the vileness derby this year. Maybe the bloggers who encourage their readers to send this sort of thing to The Times might want to ask them instead to say it in public. I don't think they'd dare.

I won't ask my readers to say in public the sort of things you reference, but will continue to ask them instead not to be vile.  And I will continue to urge them to voice — in a civil manner — their concerns to you, Mr. Okrent.  I think you want to do a good job.  But with due respect, sir, you're badly underestimating the size and the shape of the problem you have to tackle.  You and your employer and your profession need help, sir.  And you need it, it seems, more than you yet know.  Will you please recognize that, and ask for more help (from outside and inside) — and then accept it?

Thanks, Mr. Kopel and Mr. Geraghty, for the recognition

In addition to crediting blogger Bill of "INDC Journal, Snopes.com, and two anti-draft websites with intellectual integrity," Dave Kopel's latest Rocky Mountain News column, entitled "CBS peddling bogus draft fears," was kind enough to reference my earlier posts (here, here, and here) on CBS News' broadcasts fanning the draft fear flames, and Mr. Kopel cross-referenced his column on NRO's The Corner.  Thank you, sir, for the reference, and for helping spotlight CBS News' mischief and the bulk of the mainstream media's failure to call them on it!

Update (Sun Oct 10 @ 10:00pm): Jim Geraghty, who blogs The Kerry Spot for National Review Online, was also kind enough to mention me and Bill from INDC Journal in his column on the CBS News draft rumor-mongering in the print and digital versions of the October 25th issue of the National Review (a/k/a the NRODT or "National Review on Dead Trees" as it's called in the much more hip online version).  Thank you, sir!  (I've revised the title of this post to add Mr. Geraghty's name.)

The NYT's Judith Miller, Jack Shafer's "impossible minx," is no true martyr

By their jokes you shall know their true sentiments. Thus is Slate columnist Jack Shafer's ending line in an article entitled "God Bless Judith Miller: Two cheers for our courageous First Amendment martyr" revealing:

I am bewildered. I subpoena [federal prosecutor] Patrick J. Fitzgerald for an explanation.

Mr. Shafer knows, of course, that he has no subpoena power. But like Ms. Miller herself, he certainly seems to think that the press is above the law:

I don't think [Ms. Miller's] digging in as part of a calculated scheme to reform her image. She's the sort of contentious cuss who would be flipping the bird to the courts no matter what the circumstances. We journalists are lucky to have somebody as spirited as Miller telling the government, "This far and no further," and willing to defend our First Amendment rights beyond composing an op-ed piece.

God bless you, Judith Miller, you impossible minx!

I assume Miller intends to stare down Fitzgerald and Hogan all the way to the Supreme Court, and if the court hears it we can expect a re-sculpting of the First Amendment law. The legal issue at hand is whether reporters have a special privilege — not shared by civilians — to ignore subpoenas issued in good faith in criminal cases. The law of the land on this is the 1972 decision Branzburg v. Hayes, which found, broadly speaking, that reporters have no such special privilege under the First Amendment.

Quick question for you, Mr. Shafer: I had almost 400,000 page views for my blog in September. So am I entitled to the "special privilege" to ignore court orders that you'd like to see written into the law, or am I just a "civilian"? Here's a hint: I appear before federal judges regularly, and they all seem to think that I'm not only not entitled to special privileges, but that I'm subject as a lawyer to an even higher standard than "mere civilians." That's what goes with my profession — responsibility, not unaccountability. Odd that yours works the other way, huh?

As for re-sculpting First Amendment Law, here's another hint, Mr. Shafer: Check the amicus counsel in the Supreme Court opinion you linked — just search on "Floyd Abrams," he's there. There's absolutely no reason to believe that Mr. Abrams, as brilliant as he may be on her behalf, is going to be able to use Ms. Miller's case to change the holding of Branzburg v. Hayes — the majority opinion in which, as your article acknowledges, would permit enforcement of the subpoena against Ms. Miller after far less prosecutorial deference than Mr. Fitzgerald and his colleagues have shown to her and the press' interests.

Even if you support Fitzgerald's subpoena of Matt Cooper, Tim Russert, Walter Pincus, and others who wrote about the administration leakers, you must concede the subpoena of Miller is a total reach. Miller only reported on the story. She never wrote about it. Fitzgerald seems bent on penalizing Miller for her knowledge of the case rather than for her proximity to the purported crime.

No. No, no, no, a thousand times no! You're not even close, Mr. Shafer. Ms. Miller will be in jail neither for her knowledge of the case nor for her proximity to the purported crime. She will be in jail for contempt of court — specifically, for refusing to obey a grand jury subpoena, and a court order overruling her motion to quash it and ordering her to testify.

Ironically, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act was written to protect journalists from jail. Its authors intended to punish only government officials who deliberately compromised national security and U.S. publications and journalists that routinely exposed covert agents. They specifically crafted the legislation to exempt the odd reporter who reveals such information. That the law is now being used to indiscriminately line reporters up against the wall and menace them with a contempt sentence is preposterous.

Again, sir, how can you be so confused? The Act to which you refer wasn't "written to protect journalists," it was written to protect intelligence operatives, who potentially — and demonstratedly from past events — face far more than the risk of a cushy jail cell, and whose outings and resulting injury or death may threaten a national interest far greater than just their own lives, liberty, or safety. And neither Ms. Miller, nor Mr. Novak, nor any other journalist is being threatened with prosecution under the law; no reporter need feel menaced by the current application of that statute. Rather, the only reporters who need feel "menaced" by a contempt citation are those who've demonstrated their contempt for the DoJ's and judicial system's attempt to enforce the law.

Mr. Shafer, I'm a big fan of the First Amendment. I'm thrilled that, as your article correctly points out, DoJ guidelines and routine court practice has given the press substantial protection against indiscriminate use of government and private subpoenas that would compel members of the press to reveal confidential sources. But the First Amendment isn't absolute, nor the only compelling interest of our society. Your conflation of the issues is intellectually, even journalistically, sloppy. And your martyr, your "impossible mynx," is a scofflaw who deserves the jail cell that awaits her. As you aptly put it, she's "flipping the bird to the courts no matter what the circumstances," and these circumstances align her, her employer, and you squarely in favor of criminals and squarely against our national interest.

Update (Sun Oct 10 @ 3:00am): Predictably, NYT publisher Arthur Sulzberger has weighed in with an editorial urging Congress to pass a federal shield law that will expressly protect reporters like Ms. Miller from having to tell the truth when ordered to do so by courts. As part of it, he argues:

An essential tool that the press must have if it is to perform its job is the ability to gather and receive information in confidence from those who would face reprisals for bringing important information about our government into the light of day for all of us to examine. Without an enforceable promise of confidentiality, sources would quickly dry up and the press would be left largely with only official government pronouncements to report.

Duh. Mr. Sulzberger, there's no "enforceable promise of confidentiality" now. The existing law is against you; the Supreme Court says the First Amendment doesn't mean what you'd like it to mean. Whoever talked to Ms. Miller (and Mr. Novak and whoever else) did so with no assurance that he'd be able to "enforce" any promise of confidentiality; to the contrary, if we engage in the fiction of your editorial (that leakers know and are influenced by the law), he did so despite existing law which says that after exhausting other means, a prosecutor and grand jury investigating a possible crime can indeed compel a reporter to reveal a "confidential source," on penalty of going to jail for contempt of court if the reporter refuses to do so. Ask Bill Burkett how many lawyers are swarming his door to try to get his "case" against CBS News for blowing his "confidential source" status. There's no shortage of folks willing to blab their guts out — even when it involves criminal conduct — to reporters who give them a wink and a nod.

The press — however it's defined (and that's problematic in itself) — is already the beneficiary of a qualified, limited privilege of sorts, the net effect of which is to complicate law enforcement efforts. That's fine; it's a price we can pay as a society to encourage the values you're arguing. But those aren't the only values of our society, and the press isn't — and damn well shouldn't be — totally above and outside the law. Reading this editorial, I'm at a loss to know which is the right question: "How stupid do you think we are, Mr. Sulzberger?" or "How stupid are you?"

Iraqi lives count, too

If you're noting a theme in my blogging today, you're right:  We Americans aren't in this global war alone.

Last night, once again, Sen. Kerry insisted that "[n]inety percent of the casualties [in Iraq] are American."

But now even FactCheck.org is, belatedly, acknowledging that if one takes Iraqi casualties into account, Sen. Kerry's wrong, as was his running mate Sen. Edwards in the vice presidential debate:

We know of no accurate count of deaths suffered by Iraqi security forces, but an estimate reported both by the Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post puts the figure at 750. Lumping those estimated Iraqi deaths with fatalities suffered by coalition forces produces a total of 1,955. Of that, the estimated Iraqi portion is 38% — or 45% if "allies" are included with the Iraqis — and the US total amounts to 55%.

Ninety percent is only right if Iraqi lives don't count.  And if — as I believe would be even more appropriate — you include Iraqi civilian casualties inflicted by the terrorists, in addition to casualties in the Iraqi security forces, the percentages would shift even more dramatically.

Congrats to Juan Non-Volokh for calling FactCheck.org to account and getting a (stealth) correction to their earlier post.

Afghan elections

AllahPundit has a good post up on the Afghan elections, with pix.  InstaPundit of course has pix and links too.  The Commisar says, and I agree, that

[i]n October, 2001, when we started bombing the Taliban, that felt pretty good. But this is better. A lot better.

The Argus has lots of fabulous election pix — the antidote to videos of beheadings.

And special presidential envoy and U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad writes in a fact-filled article in the Wall Street Journal Online: 

The best market test to understand how Afghans view the future is the fact that 3.3 million refugees have returned from Pakistan and Iran since 2002 — the largest voluntary repatriation in history. These refugees would not return unless they believed the quality of life for their families is better in Afghanistan.

Distressed people vote with their feet — they flee.  Hopeful people also vote with their feet — they return.  And when they've returned, they vote with ballots.  (The absence of refugees flowing out of Iraq is a key reason why I refuse to accept the relentless mainstream media spin about how awful things are there.)

President Bush's remarks today get this exactly right:

We're getting close to voting time here in this country.  But who's counting the days?  (Laughter.)  There was voting time elsewhere in this world today.  A marvelous thing is happening in Afghanistan.  Freedom is powerful.  Think about a society in which young girls couldn't go to school and their mothers were whipped in the public square.  And today, they're holding a presidential election.  (Applause.)

The first person to vote in the presidential election, three years after the Taliban ruled that country with such barbarism, was a 19-year-old woman, an Afghan refugee, who fled her homeland during the civil war. Here's what she said:  "I cannot explain my feelings, just how happy I am. I would never have thought I would be able to vote in this election." She's voting in this election because the United States of America believes that freedom is the Almighty God's gift to each man and woman in this world.  (Applause.)  And today is an appropriate day for Americans to remember and thank the men and women of our Armed Forces who liberated Afghanistan.  (Applause.)

Whether Dubya wins or loses, this is an accomplishment — for him, for his administration, for our military, for our country, for our allies (yes, even Germany and France) who've helped in Afghanistan.  Whether you pray to Jesus, Jehovah, Allah, "Reason," or whomever — if you have anyone to whom you pray, ever — then today's a day to give a prayer of thanks.

At least three in the room, but the wrong three

Reader George Dunham emails me with a possible inaccuracy in Sen. Kerry's debate remarks (boldface added):

Now, for the people earning more than $200,000 a year, you're going to see a rollback to the level we were at with Bill Clinton, when people made a lot of money.

And looking around here, at this group here, I suspect there are only three people here who are going to be affected: the president, me, and, Charlie, I'm sorry, you too.

I'm not sure what non-salary income Sen. Kerry may expect for tax year 2004, nor of the terms of his prenuptial agreement with his current spouse, but his salary as a United States Senator is only $154,700.

However, regardless of the expected incomes of the general audience members, we can be relatively sure that there was at least one other person present besides President Bush and (probably) moderator Charlie Gibson of ABC News who will have income above $200,000 — someone whom Sen. Kerry seemed to have forgotten when he delivered the above-quoted line, but whom he clearly remembered in the moments after the debate ended:

Update (Sat Oct 9 @ 8:25pm): Pistol Pete of the blog Capital Ideas has a more thorough fisking of Sen. Kerry's debate statement.

Stalwart defined: Australia hangs tough, re-electing John Howard

With a margin of 52.4 percent to 47.6 percent, and more than 72 percent of the official vote count complete, it appears that John Howard's Liberal/National Coalition government will retain power, holding off Mark Latham's Australian Labor Party.  Mr. Latham has conceded defeat, and Mr. Howard's own (small-c) conservative party (named, confusingly to us Yanks, the "Liberal Party") may end up with effective control of both houses, whereas previously the conservatives were obliged to rely upon independents in the Australian Senate.  Per the AP:

The outcome means Australia will make good on Howard's pledge to keep 900 troops in Iraq until Iraqi authorities say they are no longer needed. The opposition Labor Party led by Mark Latham vowed to bring Australian soldiers home by Christmas if it won power.

It would be a mistake for Americans to interpret this solely through a Bush versus Kerry prism.  Despite the close ties between our two countries, through history and up through today, and the predominant focus of the pre-election debates in Australia on foreign policy and terrorism matters, there were of course other issues on the table besides Australia's ongoing participation as a principal bulwark in civilization's Global War on Terrorism.  Indeed, it's precisely that shallow and callow self-centered viewpoint — of which John Kerry, famously nuanced and multilingual son of a career lawyer-diplomat, is astonishingly and consistently guilty — that leads to characterizing proud, independent countries like Australia, the United Kingdom, and so many other of America's allies as being "some trumped-up, so-called coalition of the bribed, the coerced, the bought and the extorted." 

And indeed, I strongly suspect that some portion of Mr. Howard's margin of victory came from Aussies who were disgusted by Mr. Latham's own denigration of Australia's independence by painting Mr. Howard in words substantially more offensive than "Bush's poodle."   As quoted in this October 4th pre-election article from the UK's Telegraph, mistakenly entitled "Tough talker has poll win in sight" (boldface added):

Explaining his political credo, Mr Latham has said Australia is not "a namby-pamby nation", but one that is happy to call a spade a spade, "and, if need be, pick up the spade and whack someone over the head with it".

But it is his comments about Mr Howard's support for President George W Bush which sealed his notoriety, and established his credibility in a country where the Iraq war, and the current US administration, are highly unpopular.

Referring to Australia's token military commitment to the Iraqi operation, the Labour Party leader has called Mr Howard an "arse-licker", and said the prime minister returned from one recent visit to the United States "with a brown nose and a lot of skin off his knees".

Mr Howard's cabinet colleagues were described as "a conga line of suck holes", an Australian colloquialism better not explained, nor visualised.

It's not "all about Bush."  It's not even "all about us, the Americans."  It's "all about us, the civilized world."  The Australians, like the Spanish, have been, and are, and will continue to be targets of the Islamic extremists not only because they've been America's allies but because of who and what those countries themselves are, and what we all, collectively, represent.  Attempts to appease the terrorists will, like all appeasement, only invite further abuse in the middle and long run.

A narrow but decisive majority of Australians realize this, as the voters of Spain did not.  Indeed, as The Belmont Club's Wretchard notes, it appears that Mr. Howard's government will not only hang on, but improve its current position.  Australia will remain an aggressive and stalwart bulwark for civilization and against the terrorists — an ally of the United States' own efforts not because Australians have been bribed, coerced, bought, or extorted, but because of a clear-eyed and sober evaluation that their own long-term interests and America's run parallel. 

The results of the Australian election are thus something that all Americans who are serious about fighting the Global War on Terrorism — including that subset of Sen. Kerry's supporters who are serious, who believe their own candidate's rhetoric — should celebrate, because those results are indeed in our independent self-interest as Americans.

Australian bloggers Tim Blair, Arthur Chrenkoff, and The Currency Lad have more links and punditry.  Tim's summary:

Never again will I doubt the wisdom of Australians. I called this election all wrong, essentially because I couldn’t believe — despite a powerful economy, correct views on the war, and a lame opposition campaign — that John Howard could win four elections in a row.

I love this country for proving me wrong. I love Australia.

I definitely ditto that sentiment, on behalf of myself and many, many other of my own admiring and grateful countrymen.  I'm put in mind of the words of Ben Franklin at the signing of the American Declaration of Independence, on the subject of interdependence:  "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."  Our current common enemies, of course, prefer beheading to hanging.  But surely we — the civilized world — will be more effective in fighting them together if we all keep our heads screwed on straight.

(A thankful hat-tip to my emailing reader from down under Stan Blogg, who sent me some of these links and wrote, "I hope that puts a smile on your face!"  Yes, indeed it does, sir!)

Beldar's take on the second presidential debate

Uncontaminated by other punditry:

Admittedly a nit:  John Kerry in the second debate, after a question about why he picked John Edwards as his running mate:  "I'm a lawyer too."  You have a law degree, Senator.  But you're not currently licensed to practice law.

Weirdest reference:  Dubya talking about the Dred Scott decision.

Dubya feeds off an audience's energy, and this format suited him better.  He was on his game tonight — not necessarily the sharpest he's capable of being, but far, far better than he was in the first debate.

Kerry also was at his best, or near it.  But the format suited him less well.  Plain-spoken citizen questions sometimes put him on the spot — most obviously the brave, blunt question from the woman asking about federal funding for abortions.

I score this debate as a Bush win, viewed in isolation.  Discounting for my admitted bias, it was at worst a draw for Bush.  Big picture, strategically for Bush, that's still a win.

Needs a snarky caption

NYT reporter Judith Miller thinks her "job" is to defy the law

My commenters gently but justifiably mock me for so often expressing astonishment over the New York Times and the rest of the mainstream media.  But despite my best efforts to lower my expectations, I continue to find myself astonished on a regular basis.  Today's jaw-dropper (boldface added):

"I think it's really frightening when journalists can be put in jail for doing their job effectively," [New York Times' reporter Judith] Miller told reporters outside the courthouse.

Okay, let's go ahead and dress Ms. Miller in the radiant white silk robes of a High Priestess of the Mainstream Media.  We can extinguish all the ambient lighting — her righteous glow illuminates the courthouse steps beyond the poor power of technology to supplement.  "Do you know who I work for?" she might as well have said, "And don't you understand that as a High Priestess of the Mainstream Media, my job is to flout the lawful orders of the United States District Courts?"

What says the fellow inside the building, the one in the cotton-polyester black robe, holding a gavel under the regular GSA-issue fluorescent lights?

A federal judge held a reporter in contempt Thursday for refusing to divulge confidential sources to prosecutors investigating the leak of an undercover CIA officer's identity.

U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan ordered New York Times reporter Judith Miller jailed until she agrees to testify about her sources before a grand jury, but said she could remain free while pursuing an appeal. Miller could be jailed up to 18 months.

Hogan cited Supreme Court rulings that reporters do not have absolute First Amendment protection from testifying about confidential sources. He said there was ample evidence that U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of Chicago, the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case, had exhausted other avenues of obtaining key testimony before issuing subpoenas to Miller and other reporters.

"The special counsel has made a limited, deferential approach to the press in this matter," Hogan said.

Fitzgerald is investigating whether a crime was committed when someone leaked the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame, whose name was published by syndicated columnist Robert Novak on July 14, 2003. Novak cited two "senior administration officials" as his sources.

I'm quite sure that when Ms. Miller's and the NYT's superb counsel, Floyd Abrams, appears before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to seek the appellate review that Judge Hogan very graciously permitted him to undertake with his client still outside bars, he'll find a more diplomatic way to put things.  He'll talk about the First Amendment and freedom of the press; he'll talk about the important role of the press in a constitutional democracy, and why the press should be given a high degree of protection from prosecutorial subpoenas designed to uncover criminals.  The D.C. Circuit will write a short per curiam opinion, perhaps praising Mr. Abrams' efforts and acknowledging his clients' misguided sincerity, and will re-affirm that the press has indeed gotten all of the extraordinary deference to its insistence on protecting "confidential sources" that controlling Supreme Court precedent permits. 

And then — barring a change of heart on her part — they'll put Ms. Miller into jail.

Ms. Miller will not be in jail for "doing her job effectively."  In fact, as Mr. Abrams noted in trying to mitigate her punishment, and Judge Hogan acknowledged, Ms. Miller actually never wrote a story based on whatever her confidential source or sources told her.  She's a reporter who didn't report. 

No, Ms. Miller will be in jail for contempt of court for intentionally, knowingly, and above all willfully disobeying a lawful court order — and do not her words from the courthouse steps positively drip with contempt for the court, and the law, and the notion that she and the NYT are subservient to it?  Ms. Miller will richly deserve her jail time, and I will have utterly no sympathy for her.  They should hang a sign outside the door of her cell, in fact:  "Martyr without a clue."