The issues here, fundamentally, run much deeper than the subjective attitudes of the press corps vis-à-vis the White House. It has to do with the conception of journalism as primarily a stenographic activity, concerned with duly recording official statements and, perhaps, balancing those statements with contradictory quotations from official or quasi-official members of the opposition.
-- Matthew Yglesias
This Karl Rove / Valerie Plame thing is a core example of what is truly wrong with media coverage these days. First, Jacob Weisberg over at Slate has it right to dissent from the railing from various libs in the press against the violation of source immunity. In fact, he argues that outing of the sources are justified: "Outing the Plame leakers wouldn't undermine the use of confidential sources. It would merely put leakers on notice that their right to lie and manipulate the press is not absolute and not sacred."
Exactly. Put aside the value of letting the government get involved; the point is that the press hasn't done its job. Source immunity is a means to an end, not the end in itself. There seems to be a big missing of the point here. A few point out that contracts to protect sources are binding, thus this also was a bar against leaking their names. Interesting, but (1) Miller's sources relinquished her of such legal obligations and (2) The press surely are not basing their arguments on this tidbit; if "the public right to know" (scoff) required it, they would be willing to violate that principle.
Air America and other liberal sources such as those on the blogosphere are gleeful that it seems like Karl Rove and Scott McClellan have been caught in lies and mistruths respecting the Plame matter. And, the press corps were clearly pissed about it, basically ripping Scott a new one (so to speak) at a recent press conference and "gaggle." Yippee. Their scorn is a bit hard to take since they should have known (and probably did) what happened long before now. It didn't take the special prosecutor and a federal judge to force Matt Cooper's hands to know this stuff. And, if it did, it doesn't make their source immunity arguments very credible.
What the release of press memos and so forth did was to make Scott et. al. look really bad: it was a "smoking gun" so to speak. Do the press need things to be spoonfed to them for their ire to arise? The mouthpiece of the administration has bullshited the press for years. What is so special about this situation? An easier target? No, their anger and passion seems a bit fake to me.
The facts were know for YEARS. These events occurred TWO YEARS AGO. You know, before the 2004 elections. And, the press (in part because the sources were far from secret -- in fact, as noted in Speaking Freely by Floyd Abrams, a lot of "top secret" information is leaked in D.C.) were not out of the damn loop until now.
They knew what was going on, but did not fully tell the American public, and when they did so, it was weakly expressed in a way in which the Bush Administration was able to prevail. Let's be blunt about this: the net result is that the public was basically misinformed. And, we have to hear these people sanctimoniously talking about the public's right to know? Yeah, you did a great job doing that.
And, even now, the full story is not truly being put out there. This would include clear headlines and spelling out in lede paragraphs exactly what is at stake. For instance, one rarely hears about Robert Novak not only outing Plame, but also a cover company that the CIA used. It is still not always clear exactly why cover was blown: revenge or perhaps as a means to smear her husband's mission (the findings of which the evidence then and now shown was basically accurate, again why is this not repeatedly referenced?).
Nonetheless, the very act was wrong and motivated by crooked political reasoning that did not have national interests per se at heart. But, it is minutiaea -- did he technically violate the law etc. -- that is dwelled upon, partly since this was a necessary part to protect those precious sources. After all, no crime, less legal right to force the media's hands. And, anyway, this whole matter was a bit of a sideshow. Not to belittle the fact, but it surely can't hold a candle to misleading us into a bloody war. Yet another way the press did not inform the public.
So, as some chuckle with glee at how bad Scott and Karl look, remember that they too have been laughing for years. It is like those reminding us how low public opinion holds those in power. Yeah, public opinion or not, they will be in power for years to come. Even an optimistic account would suggest control of the House would take more than one election cycle, getting a net win of six Senate seats pretty hard as well. And, the lead guy himself will be with us to January 2009, thanks in some small but significant part in the press not really doing their jobs.
So they might doing it now -- even the Colorado Rockies win sometimes.