So, what is it like to serve time in jail, when the only thing standing between you and freedom is a thing called "principles"? M. A. Farber, 67, recalled that the Bergen County jail, in Hackensack, N.J., was "a 68-year-old lockup that had been declared 'unfit for human habitation.' " Mr. Farber, then a reporter for The New York Times, spent 40 days there in 1978 for refusing to disclose his confidential sources. He remembered a sign by a guard's desk. "If you can keep a cool head in these times," it said, "perhaps you don't understand the situation." Last week, the situation of Judith Miller, a New York Times reporter, got very hot. She faces jail time for her refusal to testify about her sources before a Washington grand jury. The United States Supreme Court turned down her last appeal, and a federal judge indicated that he would sentence her this week. No Times reporter has served time to protect sources since Mr. Farber, who refused to turn over his notes to a doctor charged with killing patients by injecting them with curare. The doctor, Dr. Mario Jascalevich, was acquitted. Mr. Farber was the only person to serve time in the case. In the new case, too, there is a reasonable prospect that only Ms. Miller will ever be jailed. A special prosecutor is trying to determine who leaked the identity of a covert C.I.A. agent, Valerie Plame. Time magazine, which had also been threatened with fines, announced it would comply with the judge's order to turn over the notes of its reporter, Matthew Cooper. In Mr. Farber's case, The Times paid fines totaling $286,000. Mr. Farber, known as Myron, recalled some of the other inmates vividly. "One had literally torn his mother apart," he said. "On the other hand, there was a town manager from a New Jersey town who had just been engaged in some kind of graft." The Farber case prompted many states to enact shield laws to protect journalists, and New Jersey now has one of the strongest in the nation. In January 1982, Gov. Brendan T. Byrne pardoned Mr. Farber and The Times. Mr. Farber, who is now retired, offered some advice to Ms. Miller. "She has to keep a cool head," he said. "It isn't going to last forever, and it's an important position to take. You have to do what you believe is right, what your conscience tells you to do, what is in the traditions of the profession and hope that the federal authorities, like the states, will recognize that we deserve some protection."
Go Directly to Jail
by Adam Liptak
The New York Times
July 3, 2005
https://judithmiller.com/539/go-directly-to-jail
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