Will Libby Team Get Inside Media Organizations?
(AP / CBS)
A former White House aide fighting perjury charges should not get access to reporters' notes and other newsroom material because they have no relevance to his case, several news outlets told a U.S. judge on Tuesday.According to Toni Locy of The Washington Post, the news organizations are asking the judge to "block" seven subpoenas that seek communications that mention former CIA operative Valerie Plame from all employees of the news organizations in an attempt to show that Plame's name and occupation were well known before she was "outed" in a column by Bob Novak. From The Post:The New York Times, NBC News and Time magazine also argued that press freedom would be damaged if they were forced to hand over the material sought by former vice presidential aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby's defense team.
Generally, the subpoenas seek all documents prepared or received by any employee of NBC News, The New York Times and Time that refer to Plame and her husband before Novak's column was published.Locy details the concerns for the news orgs, as voiced by attorneys for The New York Times:The subpoenas also seek drafts of articles, even those that were not published; communications between reporters and editors; and e-mail exchanges among any reporters about Plame or Wilson.
If Libby is permitted access to all that he seeks, they said, it would cause "an immediate and chilling effect on The New York Times' news gathering activities." Sources would become reluctant to talk or allow their interviews to be recorded. And reporters would begin to maintain -- or not maintain -- notes with an eye toward possible litigation, they said.Since Libby is charged with perjury and obstruction of justice for his conduct in the course of the investigation into the leaking of Plame's name, it's not entirely clear to me how proving her to be well-known would help his case. But the effort by Libby's defense team to dig deep into the internal communications of news organizations is another illustration at how deeply the press is embedded in this story.