As luck would have it, I was not only at the courthouse on the first day of U.S. v. Libby back on January 16th but, in town on other business, I happened to be here on the last day as well.
Libby was found guilty on four of five counts in his perjury and obstruction of justice trial and now faces up to 25 years in prison and a $1 million.
So, will the trial that began with a bang end with a whimper? Not likely. We will be hearing plenty about this case for a long time to come (Joe Wilson just announced a 2:30 PM teleconference so you can be sure we will be hearing more from the Wilson-Plame's).
As there are plenty of other folks better qualified than me to comment on the trial from the legal angle let me focus my attention on the media angle - specifically the blogging of the Libby Trial and the coverage of bloggers at the Libby Trial.
I do not consider myself someone with any particular qualifications to cover the Libby Trial other than as a citizen watching both how the courts work and how the media reports the news from the courts. It' why after obtaining two seats in the Media Room at the D.C. Courthouse I filled the trial schedule with members other than myself and limited my role to fillling in as needed. So, I will skip "trial coverage" for the moment.
The best word to describe the experience of being at the courthouse and live blogging the trial is "addicting". I'm not alone. Not every blogger who wanted to come to DC and cover the trial could do so but no bloggers who took a turn cut their stay short and most came away wishing they could have more days.
At the same time, as the trial wore on, I began to find the experience draining. There is a reason people are paid to cover trials or report the news. It is hard work and after any initial excitement wears off it can be a real grind. I was in the courthouse a total of eight full days (and a few partial days) during the proceedings and came away pretty well burned out. I cannot imagine be hearing every day for seven weeks. So, a tip of the hat is due to the professional journalists who were hear day in and day out.
While Jay Rosen may be right, that intellectually the debate of "blogger v. journalists" was settled long ago, there is still the place where the rubber meets the road where that issue is still being sorted - places like the Media Room at the Libby Trial.
One of the first issues that came up was what bloggers would publish about what was happening around them in the Media Room. Some of the professional journalists sought to establish "ground rules" for what the bloggers would and would not publish about what was said or done in the Media Room.
Should bloggers respond to such requests?
My view was that the court had already established "ground rules" for the media in Judge Walton's order of January 10th and it made no mention of what bloggers could or could not cover. Further, that the Courthouse is a public space including the Media Room. Further, that covering the media's coverage of the trial which includes how members of the media interact in public is part of what many bloggers came to cover at the trial and that members of the MBA had not empowered me to bind them in this regard.
At the same time, no one wants to be a source of dissension in the Media Room. Folks need to work together and there is no point in needless embarassing someone.
There were a couple instances where reporters complained about something a blogger published to their blog. In one instance, I felt it was something that was between the reporter and the individual blogger and so did not get involved. In another case, there was a clear understanding that certain discussions at a social event were meant to be off-the-record and the blogger published some information (without details) from that event. In that case, I did get involved but happily the blogger took the initiative and removed the post from the MBA feed.
The balancing act here is that i was the person who obtained the credentials that MBA members were using. This has legal ramifications because I had to sign a document to received the physical cards. So, for example, if a blogger were to be found in contempt for, say video taping the proceedings off of the close circuit TV, I would join them in jail.
There was also the AP deal. The Associated Press had certain "community" and "ethics" policies that we were required to accept as the basis for a deal where they could syndicate the MBA's feed to their network of news organizations. Should the MBA have agreed to abide by AP policies and how far should that agrement extend?
I've got more thoughts on these and other topics but I had better stop here and publish what I've got so far.
