Maybe I was wrong about the impact of the Judy jailing on the media world ... According to E&P:
CHICAGO Plain Dealer Editor Doug Clifton says the Cleveland daily is not reporting two major investigative stories of "profound importance" because they are based on illegally leaked documents -- and the paper fears the consequences faced now by jailed New York Times reporter Judith Miller.
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."
And this:
NEW YORK A new ethics policy to be issued this week at The Los Angeles Times instructs reporters to "never enter into any company computer unnamed sources," according to a New York Times report on Monday. Editor John S. Carroll said the policy was inspired by concern that even if reporters refused to divulge sources, prosecutors could unmask them by issuing subpoenas to the newspaper's technology support staff, or even the chief executive of the Tribune Company, which owns The Los Angeles Times. "They don't operate by the same rules as we do" in the newsroom, Carroll told The New York Times. |
