OSM Launch Lunch with Judith Miller

Chicken, potatoes and mixed vegetables. That’s what you wanted to know, right?

Instapundit Glenn Reynolds kicked off the lunch presentation with some comments about journalists have formed their own “guild” versus the more grassroots free-wheeling spirit of earlier newspapers and today’s bloggers.

Judith Miller is now addressing the group (did you know she has a blog?) and the impact that bloggers had on her case. She says she had no choice but to go to jail, not only to protect her most famous source, Scooter Libby, but also other (still unnamed sources). And much of the news she received in jail came from visitors who many times brought printed-out blogger accounts.

1:34PM – I just noticed that there is an important new update in the Libby indictment out today via Bob Woodward’s testimony Monday to the Special Prosecutor. Bob Woodward – The Grinch Who Stole Fitzmas – Decision ’08.

Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward testified under oath Monday in the CIA leak case that a senior administration official told him about CIA operative Valerie Plame and her position at the agency nearly a month before her identity was disclosed.

In a more than two-hour deposition, Woodward told Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald that the official casually told him in mid-June 2003 that Plame worked as a CIA analyst on weapons of mass destruction, and that he did not believe the information to be classified or sensitive, according to a statement Woodward released yesterday.

Fitzgerald interviewed Woodward about the previously undisclosed conversation after the official alerted the prosecutor to it on Nov. 3 — one week after Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, was indicted in the investigation.

1:44PM – In the context of the Federal journalist shield law proposed by Rep. Mike Pence, Ms. Miller laid out her Five Commandments for Mainstream Blogging (MSB) Reporting:

1 – Be honest about who you are, who’s writing your blog and where’s your funding comes from.

2 – Try to reach the subject of your story for comment before publishing a story about that person or persons.

3 – If subject of article denies the story, and if that subject has corroboration for denial — say so! It might actually be true.

4 – If you are wrong, acknowledge it.

5 – If you are wrong, be determined to get it right.

I can’t say I disagree. I do not think that the Mainstream Media is living up to all or most of these commandments on a daily basis.
-Bruce (GayPatriot)