Wednesday Be Careful

When the government and military subpeona independent journalists to testify for the prosecution, something is really screwy. I look forward to continuing to follow this story. Here's a quote from yesterday's DN!:

"SARAH OLSON: Well, I can't really talk too much about my legal strategy right now, but what I think is very important is that there are a couple of different issues, a couple of different problems with the Army kind of dragging journalists into a military court and asking them to testify against their sources. I think it’s my job as a journalist to report the news. It’s not my job to participate, again, in the Army, in the military or government prosecution of political speech.


I think when journalists do that, they really risk being turned into kind of the investigative arm of the government, really being seen as the eyes and ears of the military and the government. It really threatens to erode kind of that separation between the press and our government. I think that this is particularly ironic, because the Army is, again, asking me, a journalist, to build the case against military personnel speaking to the press, against dissenting voices in the media.


And I think, you know, kind of the final thing that I find really alarming about that is that it really does threaten to kind of eliminate those voices from the media. What kind of future war resisters would agree to speak with me or with other journalists if they thought that it was reasonable that they would be facing very high prison sentences, four years in prison, for explaining, you know, the reasons for their opposition to the Iraq war?


And I think that the debate around public issues, kind of current events, and in this case the Iraq war, is really an essential thing that the media provides. It’s, you know, the informed citizenry really is kind of the lifeblood of democracy, and without the media functioning as, you know, really holding kind of all -- you know, asking the important questions and really kind of representing every viewpoint, you don't have that informed debate, and I think that those are the things that the Army is really threatening and really challenging when they’re asking me and other journalists to come into court and to testify against my own source in this case about political speech."