Chicago- Plain Dealer Editor Doug Clifton says the Cleveland daily is not reporting two major investigative stories of "profound importance" because they are based on illegally leaked documents -- and the paper fears the consequences faced now by jailed New York Times reporter Judith Miller.
Lawyers for the Newhouse Newspapers-owned PD have concluded that the newspaper would almost certainly be found culpable if the leaks were investigated by authorities.
"The reporters say, 'Well, we're willing to go to jail, and I'm willing to go to jail if it gets laid on me,'" Clifton added, "but the newspaper isn't willing to go to jail. That's what the lawyers have told us. So this is a Time Inc. sort of situation."
Clifton declined to characterize the two stories, saying only they were based on material that was illegally leaked.
Clifton's revelation that the PD was holding two investigative projects was actually first published in a column he wrote June 30 about the Miller and Cooper case. While the column garnered positive reaction, he said, almost nobody picked up on the disclosure tucked into the end of the piece.
"As I write this, two stories of profound importance languish in our hands," Clifton wrote. "The public would be well served to know them, but both are based on documents leaked to us by people who would face deep trouble for having leaked them. Publishing the stories would almost certainly lead to a leak investigation and the ultimate choice: talk or go to jail. Because talking isn't an option and jail is too high a price to pay, these two stories will go untold for now. How many more are out there?"
Clifton said he wrote the column to show that "there are consequences" to the actions taken against Miller and Cooper by a federal judge and special prosecutor.
Clifton said the Miller-Cooper case has not presented any problem in its ongoing reporting of the biggest current scandal in Ohio, sometimes called "Coingate."
"So much of that we are pursuing unambiguously with public records," he said. "We've had to rely very little on anonymous sources."
RatherGate, Gitmo/Koran story, Valerie Plame Affair etc. and the main stream Media Sleeps. We are nearing De Facto control of the media by the admin's corporate friends.
Controlled mass media - Sometimes the media are controlled directly by clumsy government functionaries. At other times, sympathetic corporate media insiders shape the themes indirectly, and therefor more skillfully. Image regularly trumps content as the "news" is presented breathlessly and with flashy stage effects.
A practiced formula of tenacious repetition brings even the most absurd lie into acceptance over time. By design, the very language itself and the coloration employed will push alternate views "out of the mainstream".
The terms of any remaining debate are narrowly defined to the state's advantage, making it easy to marginalize a truly differing perspective. Censorship and "self-censorship", especially in wartime, is common.
Fascism on the march.