Prosecuting The Media

There's a lot of scary stuff in today's Washington Post article about the Bush administration's attempt to stop leaks from emanating from the government. Let's start with this paragraph from the Washington Post:

The Justice Department also argued in a court filing last month that reporters can be prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act for receiving and publishing classified information. The brief was filed in support of a case against two pro-Israeli lobbyists, who are the first nongovernment officials to be prosecuted for receiving and distributing classified information.

That's going overboard, but as noted in the article "A 1950 amendment aimed at Soviet spying broadened the law, forbidding an unauthorized recipient of the information to pass it on, or even to keep it to himself." That amendment is what I'm thinking the DOJ would consider using against journalists. But would they do it? Consider this statement by NY Times editor Bill Keller:

"There's a tone of gleeful relish in the way they talk about dragging reporters before grand juries, their appetite for withholding information, and the hints that reporters who look too hard into the public's business risk being branded traitors," said New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller, in a statement responding to questions from The Washington Post. "I don't know how far action will follow rhetoric, but some days it sounds like the administration is declaring war at home on the values it professes to be promoting abroad."

I have no doubt that the administration is salivating over the idea of sending what they consider a dissident journalist to a stay in the federal pen. Of course, when another country does something like this, they are imperiling democracy, but this administration is obsessed with consolidation of power and shining light on all of their screw ups diminishes their ability to do so.

If they start actually prosecuting journalists, do you trust them enough not to selectively leak classified information of nominal importance to those in the media that they don't approve of, only to prosecute them for receiving the information? I don't.

The bottom line is that I see this possibility as a better than fifty percent chance of happening.