Judith Miller…

What more is there to say? Not much, just an observation that may be obvious to you, but required some thinking on my part…

So we keep hearing that Judith Miller is being held in contempt of court and jailed EVEN though she never wrote anything about Valerie Plame/Wilson. As though the fact that she didn’t write anything is an extenuating circumstance.

Well, here’s my understanding: If I walk down the street and am witness to a crime, a court of law can force me to testify about it. This would be true whether or not I were a journalist, and whether or not I wrote an article about it.

The same idea applies here. Miller was witness to a crime. The court is asking her to testify about it. If she had written an article about it, one could claim that her refusal to testify was a protection of her sources, although that is probably not a legally protected right. In this case she didn’t even write about it. Which means that her case is more similar to the case of me walking down the street and witnessing a crime. It may not, ultimately, have anything to do with journalistic priviledge. She’s just protecting the perpetrator because she has OTHER business dealings (in this case journalistic) with him/(her?). That doesn’t turn her into a martyr. Does it?