Novel Strategy Pits Journalists Against Source

NYT reports In pressing his indictment of I. Lewis Libby Jr., the special prosecutor is pitting three prominent journalists against their former source, a strategy that experts in law and journalism say has rarely been used or tested. It is all but unheard of for reporters to turn publicly on their sources or for prosecutors to succeed in conscripting members of a profession that prizes its independence. Yet Mr. Libby's trial on perjury and obstruction charges will largely turn on whether jurors are more inclined to believe a government official who played a critical role in devising the justifications for the Iraq war

Gotta throw that jab in, or people might forget what you are trying to brain wash them into thinking about.

or members of a profession whose own credibility has been under assault.... "This is exactly the thing," said Jane Kirtley, a professor of media ethics and law at the University of Minnesota, "that journalists fear most - that they will become an investigative arm of the government and be forced to testify against the sources they've cultivated."

They would much rather be free to make up unnamed sources and what they imagine they told them, and not be held responsible for identifying them.