The media and politics 191ticularly if some element of illegality is involved, they have claimed the right
to remain silent, based on the First Amendment’s assertion of the freedom
of the press. However, the Supreme Court has held that reporters who are
issued with a subpoena to give evidence before a grand jury about the source
of their information cannot refuse to give evidence. In 2004 Judith Miller, a
journalist on the New York Times, was subpoenaed to give evidence concern-
ing what she knew about the press having revealed that Valerie Plame was
a CIA agent; revealing the identity of an agent is an offence under federal
law. Valerie Plame is the wife of a former American ambassador who had
criticised the George W. Bush administration over the war in Iraq, and it
has been suggested that Plame’s identity was revealed by someone in the
administration as a reprisal against her husband. Although Miller had not
herself written about Plame, it was thought that she had evidence about the
case, but she refused to reveal her source. She justified her actions by telling
the judge: ‘My motive here is straightforward. A promise of confidential-
ity, once made, must be respected, or the journalist will lose all credibility
and the public will, in the end, suffer.’ Her plea was rejected and she was
committed to jail for contempt of court. She was in jail for eighty-five days
before agreeing to reveal the name of I. Lewis Libby, former chief of staff to
Vice-President Cheney, but only after obtaining Libby’s agreement to the
disclosure of his name. A number of states have enacted ‘shield laws’ that
provide a degree of protection for journalists against prosecution for refusing
to reveal their sources.
The management of the media
So far we have considered the effect of the media on the way politics is con-
ducted, but there is a reverse side of the coin – the way in which politicians,
usually the ones in office, try to manage or manipulate the media. To some
extent this represents a very necessary function of government; to provide
the information on a vast range of issues that is necessary for the public to
be able to understand what government is doing and why. But, as with all the
double-sided aspects of the media, there is a point at which providing infor-
mation tips over into providing disinformation, misleading the public in or-
der to achieve political ends that cannot be achieved in any other way. Again
this can take many forms, some relatively harmless. It has become common
for political protagonists to put ‘spin’ onto the presentation of a policy or the
way a government is performing. ‘Spin’ does not necessarily involve lying;
rather putting forward the best possible interpretation of the situation by
being ‘economical with the truth’, that is suppressing important aspects of
a policy or performance and emphasising other aspects to the point where
truth is distorted. At the extreme it does mean making statements that are
knowingly untrue, presumably in the hope that in the short term this will
achieve the desired end and that in the long term it will be forgotten.
Obviously the administration needs an organisational structure to liaise