Norman Solomon

Should journalists care if sources go off to prison?

By Norman Solomon / Columbia Journalism Review

Ask yourself this question: Is it sufficient to protect journalists who report classified information while sources go off to prison?

During the last half decade, a growing roster of national-security reporters has withstood government pressure to reveal confidential sources. They’ve done so with the steady support of news organizations and well-heeled groups that work to protect journalists from threats of jail. Yet those media outfits show scant interest in advocating for the whistleblowers who put themselves at risk. If they go to prison, c’est la vie.

The intertwined cases of New York Times reporter James Risen and former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling point up the contrast. Risen got broad and repeated support from the media establishment; Sterling got none.

After seven years of government harassment and threats that began in early 2008, Risen prevailed with his steadfast refusal to identify any confidential source for his book State of War. But a year ago, a jury in CIA-friendly Northern Virginia convicted Sterling on multiple counts of the Espionage Act, accepting the prosecution’s claim that he had provided Risen with classified information for a chapter in the book, which included details about a botched CIA operation that provided faulty nuclear weapons design information to Iran

Just after the verdict, the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press told The New York Times: “The speed with which the jury reached its verdict shows that reporter’s testimony was not needed for the government to make its case. I think going forward this is going to be a powerful precedent.” Such comments were echoed in celebratory fashion by then-Attorney General Eric Holder and others eager to drive a bigger wedge between journalists and whistleblowers.

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The Bernie Campaign: The Democratic Party’s Biggest Insurrection in Decades

By Norman Solomon

Forty-eight years ago, a serious insurrection jeopardized the power structure of the national Democratic Party for the first time in memory. Propelled by the movement against the Vietnam War, that grassroots uprising cast a big electoral shadow soon after Senator Eugene McCarthy dared to challenge the incumbent for the Democratic presidential nomination.

When 1968 got underway, the news media were scoffing at McCarthy’s antiwar campaign as quixotic and doomed. But in the nation’s leadoff New Hampshire primary, McCarthy received 42 percent of the vote while President Lyndon B. Johnson couldn’t quite get to 50 percent -- results that were shattering for LBJ. Suddenly emboldened, Senator Robert Kennedy quickly entered the race. Two weeks later, Johnson announced that he wouldn’t seek re-election.

Although the nomination eventually went to Johnson’s vice president Hubert Humphrey -- a supporter of the war who was the choice of Democratic power brokers -- the unmasking of the party’s undemocratic process led to internal reforms that aided the Democratic Party’s second modern insurrection. It came four years later, when Senator George McGovern won the presidential nomination, thanks to grassroots movements involving young people and activists of color. But any sense of triumph disappeared in the wake of President Nixon’s landslide re-election in November 1972.

The third major insurrection came in 1988, when Jesse Jackson led a dynamic, multiracial “rainbow” campaign for president that had major impacts on the national stage. (His previous campaign, in ’84, had been relatively weak.) The 1988 primaries and caucuses were hard-fought, state by state, with rainbow activists working shoulder-to-shoulder, whether focused on issues of class, race or gender. (Back then, Jackson was a gutsy voice for social justice, for human rights and against war -- much more willing to confront the Democratic Party establishment than he is now.) At the contentious Democratic National Convention that summer in Atlanta, where Jackson delegates were highly visible as 30 percent of the total, the old guard closed ranks behind nominee Michael Dukakis.

Now, as February 2016 gets underway, we’re in the midst of the first major insurrection against the Democratic Party power structure in 28 years. The millions of us who support the Bernie Sanders campaign -- whatever our important criticisms -- should aim to fully grasp the huge opportunities and obstacles that await us.

Of the three previous insurrections, only one gained the nomination, and none won the presidency. Corporate capitalism -- wielding its muscular appendage, mass media -- can be depended upon to take off the gloves and pummel the insurrection’s candidate to the extent that the campaign has gained momentum. That happened to McCarthy, McGovern and Jackson. It’s now happening to Sanders.