The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page goes even further than the Washington Post’s. They want an immediate pardon for Scooter Libby. Meanwhile, the New York Times’ editorial page is pleased with the verdict but they display some real stupidity:
We also do not understand why the federal prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, chose to wage war with the news media in assembling his case, going so far as to jail a Times reporter, Judith Miller, for refusing to reveal the name of a confidential source.
Really? You don’t understand? Do you think Fitzgerald could have secured a conviction without evidence from Miller, Pincus, Cooper, Woodward, Sanger, and Russert? No?
The reason that Fitzgerald ‘wage[d] a war with the news media’ should be pretty obvious. The media knew the truth and they weren’t volunteering it. It’s pretty depressing to look at the fallout from the Libby trial.
Bob Woodward was once revered for his fearless reporting. Now we know that Richard Armitage leaked Valerie Wilson’s occupation to him before Rove and Libby even got started. He didn’t have the bad sense to pass that information on to the general public, but he also didn’t inform his editors at the Washington Post for over two years. Woodward decided, rather, to dismiss the seriousness of the crime without disclosing that he was at the heart of the crime.
Tim Russert was once respected as a tough interviewer. Now we know that the Office of the Vice-President considered him the most pliant avenue for spreading their disinformation. Now we know that he freely blabbed to the FBI about his his ‘privileged’ viewer complaint conversation with Scooter Libby. And then he fought a subpoena that asked him to testify to that same information in a grand jury. How principled.
Judith Miller was once respected as an expert on weapons of mass destruction. Some even saw her as martyr for the free press. Now we know that she was willing to cite Scooter Libby as a ‘former Hill staffer’. Now we know that she was little better than a stenographer for the Office of the Vice-President and the conduit for Andy Card’s Iraq War marketing plan.
Judy Miller is disgraced, along with Viveca Novak and Bob Novak. Bob Novak sang like a canary. And he’s the lone idiot that was stupid enough to use Valerie Wilson’s name.
This isn’t even a comprehensive list. Matt Cooper wrote a column about the Plame Affair that he knew to be false. The great gift of the Plame Affair is that is has allowed the public to get a good look at our mainstream media. We got a good look at how the Bush administration manipulates and uses the media and how the media, in turn, protects them. Thank god for blogs and bloggers.
It allowed us a good look but was nothing we really wanted to see.
Amen. “Thank god for blogs and bloggers.” AMEN!!!
I can’t believe that they have the nerve to keep their jobs and then moan that Fitz went too far.
Hubris. Fucking hubris.
The “paper of record” on the Libby trial was a blog.
That’s all you really need to know about the case as far as the media’s concerned.
Reporters today are entirely unable to perform their jobs without the use of the covert status of officials. The official agrees to disclose, and the reporter agrees on the status of confidence for that official.
That’s fine, when something is being disclosed.
The difference here is that the DISCLOSURE was the VIOLATION of the law. You cannot provide a confidential guarantee to allow an official to perform a felony and do a political hit job.
The journalists are whining, but this issue is different from all other disclosure situations that I have ever heard of.
That Wall Street Journal editorial is something else. The editorial page writers there live in a completely alternate reality. It’s really creepy.
It’s amazing. Go check out C&L tonight, they’ve got clips of some real winning defenses from the wingnuts: Scooter’s a nice guy, so he should be pardoned and all, especially since the evil Wilsons are out to get Bush.
No really, these are the actual arguments being put forth for the exoneration of Scooter Libby. He’s a nice guy. It wasn’t a real crime. The Wilsons are the villains and they were trying to sabotage our Leader’s noble effort to stop Saddam’s WMDs.
We are not dealing with rational people here. They are trying to win by insanity.
I can’t believe the Washington Post lets him write editorials – I cringe when I see his name. For me the credibility of the paper is damaged by having him write for them. I don’t go there for the news anymore. I’m distressed about the New York Times not admitting that the Bush Administration was using the Times reporters for the trash that they wanted the public to hear. The standards apparently are so low that the papers are offended that someone believes that the reporters should have been cognizant about this Rove plot to mangle the first amendment.