Media writer Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post offers these thoughts on the prospect of the NYT's Judith Miller and Time magazine's Matthew Cooper going to jail.

I also link to some other stuff.

From Kurtz:

In terms of public opinion, of course, this is a terrible test case for journalists. The Plame leakers are not exactly Mark Felt, and fairly or unfairly, Miller and Cooper are seen by some as protecting high officials who carried out a tawdry act of revenge. Their response is that journalists must keep their word when making a pledge of confidentiality and can't pick and choose according to how sympathetic the sources are. But this remains a tough sell, PR-wise, even though neither of them would be in this situation had Novak not published the leak. And the general public dissatisfaction with journalists using so many unnamed sources, which some major news outlets are now trying to reduce, doesn't help.

It's hard to understand why 49 states (Wyoming is the exception) recognize a reporter's right to protect confidential sources, but not the federal government. Yes, journalists are occasionally jailed or threatened with jail at the state level, but these tend to involve murder cases in which a reporter talked to the suspect or has key evidence. Some members of Congress are pushing for a federal shield law, but I don't think that's at the top of the GOP leadership's list.

Is it really possible that Cooper and Miller will have to spend a year and a half away from their families while the folks who outed Valerie Plame get away with it?

From a Salon article:

Andy Alexander, Washington bureau chief for Cox Newspapers and the chair of the Freedom of Information Committee for the American Society of Newspaper Editors, said Miller's case is particularly troubling.

Allowing a federal prosecutor to compel a reporter to testify even if she's never published the source's information "moves us perilously close to having the government turning reporters into an arm of the police. When we see that happening in regimes around the world Americans are quick to label it a police state. Well, now that's happening in America."

What's most odious about the idea of Miller and Cooper going to jail is that there isn't a clear purpose to it. Perhaps you could make an argument for keeping them behind bars if it would lead the government to the scoundrel who leaked Plame's name. But lawyers who've been watching Fitzgerald's moves in the case suggest that he may already have some idea of who leaked the name, and the fact that he hasn't yet charged someone in the case may indicate that there's not enough evidence to move forward on the prosecution. Instead, what Fitzgerald seems to be after is a much weaker charge of obstruction of justice -- a low-level, catchall accusation that federal prosecutors use all the time when their main investigation runs dry. (Martha Stewart, for instance, was convicted of obstruction -- lying to prosecutors -- after investigators failed to make an insider trading charge stick.)

Compelling a reporter to testify about his or her sources in order to prosecute a mere obstruction of justice charge would strike a deep blow at the free press, says Bruce Sanford, a First Amendment attorney at the Washington firm Baker & Hostetler. "It's a puny crime at best, and it really does not justify this incredible disruption of the relationship between reporters and sources," Sanford says.