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.