Thoughts On A Colleague In Prison, What Judith Miller's case means to them

Journalists and editors who live or summer on the East End had much to say this week about the imprisonment of Judith Miller, a Sag Harbor resident and New York Times reporter who was jailed on July 6 for refusing to name a source.

Ms. Miller, who had investigated the Valerie Plame affair but never actually wrote a story about it, was charged with civil contempt.

"It appears that no crime has been committed," said Jay Severin, a conservative radio talk show host who broadcasts from Sag Harbor, and who said he had recently changed his opinion about Ms. Miller's imprisonment.

"It seems brutal and senseless to confine Judith Miller in the absence of any evidence of the committing of a crime. It is appalling that she is there."

"I don't understand how Judith Miller ever committed a crime when she didn't ever write a story," said James Brady, a columnist for Parade and former editor of Women's Wear Daily who lives in East Hampton.

"It is tremendously confusing," added Mr. Severin. "The only thing that keeps a shred of dignity and legitimacy in the government's corner is the fact that the federal prosecutor can say to the world, 'We know things you don't know.' "

David Margolick, a contributing editor to Vanity Fair, said he admired Ms. Miller. "Once you start compromising, fudging your sources, you are no longer reliable." Ms. Miller was sent to a prison in Alexandria, Va., and will remain there until the grand jury investigation on the matter ends in October. If she were to change her mind and reveal the name of her source, she would be released.

"I am assuming that she may have different sources than Matt Cooper," said Roger Rosenblatt of Quogue, an essayist for Time magazine and for the "NewsHour" on PBS, referring to the Time magazine reporter whose notes were handed over to the government. "The important thing is that she had the courage to do the right thing even at the expense of a portion of her life."

"I would absolutely do the same," Mr. Margolick said. "She is honoring the highest traditions of the profession."

"I think she is absolutely right," said Mr. Brady. "You can't have journalism both ways. You either protect your sources or you don't have any."

Mr. Severin called Ms. Miller's decision "very very courageous. I don't think it exaggerates it to call it Martin Luther King-like. I believe it is in the finest tradition of civil disobedience."

Joan Konner of Sagaponack, former dean of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and the former publisher of the Columbia Journalism Review, saw public reaction to Ms. Miller's imprisonment in a slightly different light.

"There isn't an enormous amount of sympathy for her because people are ambivalent about her work as a journalist," Ms. Konner said. "It seems to be unreliable sometimes, particularly with her weapons of mass destruction reporting. She is not a heroine, though she is doing great things."

"It is a disgrace that she is in jail," she added, "an egregious miscarriage of justice."

"I don't understand why [Robert Novak] was never dragged before courts and subpoenaed," said Mr. Brady.

Ms. Konner and Mr. Brady also considered the matter of Norman Pearlstein, the editor in chief of Time Inc., who decided to hand over the notes of Matthew Cooper, a Time magazine reporter, to the special prosecutor.

"The other side of the equation is that Norman Pearlstein did the wrong thing for Time magazine," Ms. Konner said. "Pearlstein says nobody is above the law, even journalists. But if the notes can be turned over and sources can be revealed under certain circumstances, what it's really saying really undermines the fundamental underpinnings of good reporting."

Mr. Brady said he "would hate to have been in Norm Pearlstein's shoes; you don't know what internal or external pressures were working on him. He claims that he made the decision on his own. I think he made a mistake."

"People don't choose to be heroes," said the syndicated columnist Richard Reeves. "Heroism chooses them and now I think Judy is one."