The Farmington, New Mexico Police Department has been telling reporters for the local Daily Times that this, that and the other information isn’t public. Too sensitive, you know.
In Carlsbad, New Mexico, the daily Current-Argus is suing the city for release of information on applicants for the administrator’s job. FOG, the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government is helping the paper.
I remember as a young reporter (eons ago) the cops in several small towns in Northern New Jersey cooperating when they wanted to and hiding the blotter when they found it convenient.
It took time, but I finally figured out why they weren’t open. Police blotter knowledge in the hands of the cops (and often, the Mayor who named the Police Chief), gives them power. Once that information is public, the power goes away. To put it another way, they can get away with a lot by maintaining
secrecy.
I learned a lot covering small town cops, Councils, boards of education and zoning and such. Later, I learned that the same forces – fear, ego, money and other forms of power, among them – operate at the state and federal levels, too.
Consider now the federal judge who sent Judith Miller of the New York Times to jail because she wouldn’t cooperate with a Justice Department probe into a White House leak that may have violated the law against outing US spies.
No matter that she never wrote a story.
No matter that the prosecutor hasn’t told us a crime was committed.
No matter that Robert Novak, right-wing columnist, named the spy after talking to the White House leaker.
No matter that Novak has been interviewed by the special prosecutor.
No matter that the Time Magazine, citing its corporate responsibilities, turned over its reporters’ notes to the government – Karl Rove’s name was in them - and that its reporter- who wrote a story after Novak's revelation - agreed to testify with his source's permission.
I wish I knew more, but one conclusion is obvious.
What started as a search for a leaker in the White House who may have violated the law has become an effort to bend corporate news organizations and individual reporters to Washington’s will.
Hey, as the cops in small towns know, you can get away with murder so long as you can operate in secrecy.
Posted by Arthur Alpert at July 9, 2005 10:54 AM