What are they being held in contempt for?

I feel like I should know this, but I can't think of any significant judicial messes related to TIME, Inc.

We continue to believe that the right to protect confidential sources is fundamental to journalism. Without that right, important information that should be available to the public would never see the light of day.

No secret in Washington is more secure than the names of leakers. No one leaks on leakers – ever. The government cannot keep anything secret for very long, but the names of leakers can remain hidden for decades, Deep Throat being the best example. The Plame story is a prime example of the “who” and “why” of the leak is more newsworthy than Plame’s outing.

Protecting the access to information of wrong doing by keeping the names of a whistle blowers would be a noble defense, except it rarely applies to the information coming out of Washington. Either spin doctors are at work, or it is someone advancing their career by torpedoing someone else’s. Unattributable sources are a cancer in the body of journalism and the sooner the practice is ended the better.

Well, we hold them in contempt, no it's official.

Why isn't Time also demanding an end to the investigation of Bob Novak? He's a journalist too. (No offense intended, Bob.)

To quote Spider Jerusalem's long-suffering editor Royce:

"Moo hoo bwah hah."

-M

PS: To all those wanting to argue the point: thanks for your concerns, but I happen to live inside the Beltway, and bluntly the level of anonymous-sourced crap that I have to wade through to get to the news is even more egregious than it is ubiquitous. They went one hundred thousand too many times to this particular well; I politely decline to care about anonymous accusations any longer, and also I politely decline to give a damn whether that bothers anybody.

a few points:

1) nobody is going to go after deep throat, but not because he told on a hated republican, but because he didnt technically break the law - and he revealed information about a crime.

2) these guys were responsible for breaking a law put on the books after that whacko revealed the IDs of all the CIA agents around the world in his tell all whose funding came from KGB plants (see verona for more information on this debacle) and are going to get BURNED. There is no protection.

Mr. Pealstine, tell someone who cares - tell Eason Jordan and CNN - about the public's right to now.

I've always been very supportive of the judicial interpretation of the First Amendment that holds that we all have the same First Amendment rights - "journalists" are not a higher form of nobility or High Priest over the rest of us.

They shall testify to their knowledge of crimes.

"The free-flow (sic) of information is central to a democracy....", so they refuse to say a word to the court. Apparently, that "free-flow" thing doesn't apply in the direction of the judiciary.

All the hand wringing in the world won't stop these journalists from being put before a grand jury in regard to the Plame matter, lest they go to jail for up to 18 months.

Likewise, contrary to popular belief, Bob Novak has virtually the identical legal exposure as these other journalists. The law that everyone thinks Novak broke doesn't apply to him, but rather the source that gave him the information, and then only if they can show a pattern of activity, thus the need for information from these other journalists.

Journalists do not have "the right to protect confidential sources," they have an obligation to protect their sources despite the potential legal consequences of doing so. Needless to say, those are two very different things.