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JAILING THE MESSENGER: LEAKS, SOURCES, AND FREEDOM OF THE PRESS
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When: Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Where:
Engelman Hall, The Baruch Performing Arts Center: 55 Lexington Avenue at 25th Street, NYC
With Judith Miller in jail and
subpoenas directed to journalists and news-gathering organizations on
the rise, PEN American Center hosted a public program exploring the
growing conflict over reporters’ privilege. In a moderated
discussion and debate, panelists Ronald Dworkin, Vanessa Leggett,
Anthony Lewis, Norman Pearlstine, and Helen Zia examined the
question of how to balance the great importance of nurturing a vigorous
free press and ensuring public access to information against competing
values such as the rights of criminal defendants, privacy rights, and
national security.
The United States now joins just 19 other
nations where writers and journalists are currently in prison for their
work, and PEN is concerned that the rise in contempt proceedings here
leaves journalists outside the United States vulnerable as well. At the same
time, the legal and constitutional questions at the heart of the Plame
leak case and related cases are challenging. As we grapple with
these issues, there are significant cultural questions as well. What does it mean for an information society as the press is
increasingly asked to share what it knows with prosecutors and law
enforcement? What are the dangers to free expression if the
privilege many jurisdictions accord the journalist's relationship with
confidential sources is abused for political purposes? And is a
balancing of competing interests possible without shutting down the
willingness of anonymous sources to come forward?
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