DC Event Tonight

It's not too late to reserve a seat to The Future of the Free Press a free panel discussion to be held tonight at 7:00 PM at the National Press Club (529 14th St., NW ).

The Future of the Free Press: Should Journalists Be Able to Use Confidential Sources and Seek Secret Information?

Panelists:

• Nina Totenberg, legal affairs correspondent for National Public Radio
• Judge Stanley Sporkin, a retired United States District Judge for the District of Columbia and presently a partner at Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP
• Earl Caldwell, Writer-in-Residence at the Scripps Howard School of Journalism and Communications at Hampton University Intelligence Correspondent, Editor and Senior Vice President of The Baltimore Sun
• Victoria Toensing, Partner at diGenova & Toensing, LLP
• Bob Drogin, Washington D.C. Intelligence Correspondent for The Los Angeles Times
• Tim Franklin, Editor and Senior Vice President of The Baltimore Sun
• Steven D. Clymer, Professor at Cornell Law School
• Lee Levine, Partner at Levine, Sullivan, Koch & Schulz, LLP
• Dale Cohen, Associate General Counsel, Media for Cox Enterprises, Inc., moderator.

To reserve a seat, call the National Press Club at (202) 662-7501.

The program is sponsored by Olsson's Books, National Press Club, the MLRC Institute, the Newseum and the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression.

Comments

[Doug]

What? Is anybody actually going to argue the "no" side of this question?

Much more interesting would be a discussion about the perils of anonymice, things like describing Scooter Libby as a "former Congressional staffer" when he was in fact Cheney's national security adviser, and whether or not it should be mandatory to burn a confidential source who has lied to you.

Here's Eisenhower on fighting in Italy (December 29, 1943): "Today we are fighting on a country which has contributed a great deal to our cultural inheritance, a country rich in monuments which by their creation helped and now in their old age illustrate the growth of the civilization which is ours. We are bound to respect those monuments so far as war allows. ... Nothing can stand against the argument of military necessity. That is an accepted principle. But the phrase 'military necessity' is sometimes used when it would be more truthful to speak of military convenience or even of personal convenience. I do not want it to cleak slackness or indifference."

The present administration uses national security as an analogue to "military necessity" above. But when the archives are opened it will become clear to all that this administration has said "national security" when it would have been truthful to speak of "personal convenience" or even "cover-up of law breaking." Grrr.