New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper are facing jail time for refusing to reveal their source in the Valerie Plame scandal.

As you may recall, this is the scandal where Robert Novak outed an undercover CIA agent, apparently as political retribution for Plame’s husband’s hostility toward the Bush administration. Novak himself faces no penalties.

With the classified topic of the scandal and the secrecy of a grand jury investigation, there is a lot we do not know about this case. What we do know is that for a strong press to exist in this country, reporters need to be able to keep the identities of their sources private.

This is not an attempt to dismiss this case. There was almost certainly a crime committed within the government, most probably by the source himself or herself. There are few crimes more serious than revealing an undercover agent, which could lead to deaths of anyone known to be involved with the agent and could corrupt intelligence. The alleged motive for the release — to discredit Joseph Wilson for being critical of the president — is petty and not something that deserves constitutional protection.

Something that is often forgotten in this discussion, though, is that this information was shopped to seven different journalists, and six recognized it as unsuitable for publication. Six out of seven isn’t fantastic, but when you consider that the one person who went for it was a partisan columnist, it does look a little better. Miller writes for The New York Times, with its claim to publish “All the news that’s fit to print.” She followed this slogan well, writing absolutely nothing about Plame. Cooper did write about Plame, but only after Novak had already let the cat out of the bag.

There are really two people at fault in this situation — the source/criminal and the journalist who allowed the source to use him. If the government goes after journalists, and especially journalists who did nothing wrong, it chills the press. If, on the other hand, the media were to take it upon themselves to deal with these problems, the only thing likely to be chilled would be revelation of dangerous information for partisan gain.

It seems strange that an institution that has used firings as a solution to every other problem, from Jayson Blair to Jack Kelley to Stephen Glass to Eason Jordan, would overlook it in this case.

The only logical outcome of this event is for papers to stop syndicating Robert Novak and for the Chicago Tribune to fire him.