Ethics not a crime

New York Times reporter Judith Miller is locked in federal prison today, where she will likely remain until October. Her crime: refusing to testify about an anonymous source she interviewed for a story that was never even published.\nMiller, along with Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, was prosecuted for refusing to reveal the source that led to the outing of an undercover CIA operative. Both journalists faced jail-time but Cooper agreed to testify at the last minute when the anonymous source told him he could. Requests to serve time under home detention or in a prison camp were denied and Miller will be confined in a federal prison. \nMiller has been forced to sacrifice her personal freedom for her profession's ethics. It is a brave decision but one that neither Miller nor any journalist should ever have to make. Our country depends upon a free press to check the government and when journalists can be thrown in jail for defending some of the basic tenants of that press, it is compromised.\nAs the bars slam shut on Miller's cell, they confine a journalist defending the ethics of her profession, not a criminal. Until our government recognizes that as a problem, journalism as a whole will suffer with her.