Journalists Testify in Favor of Shield Law

NYT reported Judith Miller, the reporter for The New York Times who spent 85 days in jail for refusing to identify a confidential source, warned Wednesday that unless Congress passed a national shield law to protect reporters and their sources, "the Alexandria detention facility may have to open an entire new wing to house reporters."

Just because we might have to build more jails should not mean people who violate the law should not have to go to jail.

In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Ms. Miller said more than two dozen reporters had been subpoenaed in the last two years over their confidential sources and faced the possibility of going to jail.

And yet only she did. The others decided to obey the law

While she has put herself in the center of the debate over the bill, having spent the summer in jail for initially refusing to testify in the C.I.A. leak case, her actions, including her decision to testify, appear to have muddled the issue.....Introduced this year by Senator Richard G. Lugar and Representative Mike Pence, both Republicans from Indiana, the bill has just 11 co-sponsors in the Senate and 63 in the House. Neither the House nor the Senate is expected to take it up this year. The bill is also strongly opposed by the Justice Department,

and by me.

which sent a representative to Wednesday's hearing to register the department's many objections.