David Broder Shows His Conservative Bias, Joins Kinsley In Selling Out Press Freedoms and Judy Miller
Written from Seward, Alaska --
I've known David Broder of the Washington Post for a long time, certainly since he stuck the knife into Jimmy Carter toward the end of the 1976 Presidential campaign. He is a closet conservative who tries not to show it most of the time.
He's a good reporter. Nobody can call an election better than David Broder, as he showed in the California Recall campaign.
But when it comes to defending the First Amendment and American democracy, Broder has something lacking. Like Matt Cooper at Time magazine, who has now revealed two sources to whom he once gave a pledge of confidentiality, and Michael Kinsley, who is unprincipled by principle, Broder is out there in a column I read in the Anchorage Times picking on Judy Miller.
She is not the perfect reporter, he says. He cites her mistakes in once using Iraqi sources.
Everyone makes mistakes. But right now, Judy Miller is in jail defending press freedoms and I would wager David Broder had a delicious dinner tonight.
For shame! I'm afraid David Broder and Matt Cooper would not have been with George Washington when he crossed the Delaware, but home writing that the American colonists were making mistakes in the fight against the British.
Broder does have the grace to suggest that maybe George Bush is not keeping his word when he said he would get rid of aides involved in leaks. But Karl Rove is not the firwt Washington official to leak to the press.
The Administration, however, has hired people to pretend to be reporters and has put out fake press releases. I pay tribute to the President for fighting the terrorists, but in defending freedom of the press he is delinquent.
Lord Nelson, at Trafalgar, told sailors under his command: "England Expects Every Man Will Do His Duty." The duty of American journalists today is to defend Judy Miller and assail Judge Thomas Hogan, who is violating his oath to defend the U.S. Constitution.
I've known David Broder of the Washington Post for a long time, certainly since he stuck the knife into Jimmy Carter toward the end of the 1976 Presidential campaign. He is a closet conservative who tries not to show it most of the time.
He's a good reporter. Nobody can call an election better than David Broder, as he showed in the California Recall campaign.
But when it comes to defending the First Amendment and American democracy, Broder has something lacking. Like Matt Cooper at Time magazine, who has now revealed two sources to whom he once gave a pledge of confidentiality, and Michael Kinsley, who is unprincipled by principle, Broder is out there in a column I read in the Anchorage Times picking on Judy Miller.
She is not the perfect reporter, he says. He cites her mistakes in once using Iraqi sources.
Everyone makes mistakes. But right now, Judy Miller is in jail defending press freedoms and I would wager David Broder had a delicious dinner tonight.
For shame! I'm afraid David Broder and Matt Cooper would not have been with George Washington when he crossed the Delaware, but home writing that the American colonists were making mistakes in the fight against the British.
Broder does have the grace to suggest that maybe George Bush is not keeping his word when he said he would get rid of aides involved in leaks. But Karl Rove is not the firwt Washington official to leak to the press.
The Administration, however, has hired people to pretend to be reporters and has put out fake press releases. I pay tribute to the President for fighting the terrorists, but in defending freedom of the press he is delinquent.
Lord Nelson, at Trafalgar, told sailors under his command: "England Expects Every Man Will Do His Duty." The duty of American journalists today is to defend Judy Miller and assail Judge Thomas Hogan, who is violating his oath to defend the U.S. Constitution.
posted by Ken Reich at 6:39 PM
3 Comments:
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I'm certainly in agreement with that. My newspaper, the American Reporter, has published an encomium to Judith Miller at the top of the page every other day since her arrest. I'm surprised more editors aren't counting her days in jail.
PS: A typo: the firwt Washington official
Is freedom of the press absolute? What if a reporter knows that a confidential source has, hypothetically, committed treason, leaked classified information, placed covert operatives and sources in danger, and harmed our fight against the terrorists?
And now truly hypothetically, what if a reporter finds that a confidential source is a terrorist? Can she be compelled to reveal her source then?
Come on Ken, there have to be some limits here. The courts have repeatedly found that there are.
You, like it seems a lot of reporters, are consititutionally incapable of seeing this issue clearly. You're too involved. Thankfully, we have an independent judiciary whose job it is to interepret the entire constitution and body of US laws, not just cherry pick the parts they like.
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