The Pen In Service To The Sword
Someone ought to tell the mainstream press that whining is unbecoming. After nearly six and a half years of being mere stenographers for whatever the White House wanted shoved down the public's throat, the press has no grounds to complain about the process used in the Libby prosecution. The underlying crime being investigated in the case was the intentional identification of a covert CIA agent. In other words, the leak was the crime. Too many journalists were only too happy to have enough access to the the administration to be the recipient of such a leak, even if they didn't actually publish Valerie Plame's name. For this the press got busted. Crying about the lost sanctity of the anonymous source-journalist relationship is a cover-up for that bust.
Adam Liptak's analysis piece in today's NY Times makes that clear, even if that wasn't his stated intention.
...the institution most transformed by the prosecution, and the one that took the most collateral damage from Patrick J. Fitzgerald’s relentless pursuit of obstruction and perjury charges against Mr. Libby, may have been the press, forced in the end to play a major role in his trial.
After Mr. Libby’s conviction Tuesday, it is possible to start assessing that damage to the legal protections available to the news organizations, to relationships between journalists and their sources and to the informal but longstanding understanding in Washington, now shattered, that leak investigations should be pressed only so hard.
When the leak itself is the crime, and it has an impact on national security, the press can now expect a prosecutor to go to the mat on uncovering the source of that leak. This is not necessarily a good thing, because true whistleblowers may not feel safe in going to the press and the public may lose access to the truth about government malfeasance. However, that wasn't the case that was just tried.
...the journalists who testified at the Libby trial were Washington insiders, and they gave the public a master class in access journalism. It was not always a pretty sight.
“They’re not fearless advocates,” Professor Feldstein [a journalism professor at George Washington University] said of the reporters involved, “but supplicants, willing and even eager to be manipulated.” [Emphasis added]
And that, my friends, was what this case clearly showed: a whole generation of journalists more interested in the DC cocktail circuit than doing the job of a free press.
Like I said: busted!
Adam Liptak's analysis piece in today's NY Times makes that clear, even if that wasn't his stated intention.
...the institution most transformed by the prosecution, and the one that took the most collateral damage from Patrick J. Fitzgerald’s relentless pursuit of obstruction and perjury charges against Mr. Libby, may have been the press, forced in the end to play a major role in his trial.
After Mr. Libby’s conviction Tuesday, it is possible to start assessing that damage to the legal protections available to the news organizations, to relationships between journalists and their sources and to the informal but longstanding understanding in Washington, now shattered, that leak investigations should be pressed only so hard.
When the leak itself is the crime, and it has an impact on national security, the press can now expect a prosecutor to go to the mat on uncovering the source of that leak. This is not necessarily a good thing, because true whistleblowers may not feel safe in going to the press and the public may lose access to the truth about government malfeasance. However, that wasn't the case that was just tried.
...the journalists who testified at the Libby trial were Washington insiders, and they gave the public a master class in access journalism. It was not always a pretty sight.
“They’re not fearless advocates,” Professor Feldstein [a journalism professor at George Washington University] said of the reporters involved, “but supplicants, willing and even eager to be manipulated.” [Emphasis added]
And that, my friends, was what this case clearly showed: a whole generation of journalists more interested in the DC cocktail circuit than doing the job of a free press.
Like I said: busted!
Labels: Free Press
posted by Diane at 9:33 AM
1 Comments:
speaking of dc cocktail circuit, besides sally quinn, here is another cocktail mistress:
Another former aide to Vice President Cheney, Juleanna Glover Weiss, may be known around town as much for her successful cocktail parties as for her work as a political operative.
"I think it's important that people know each other in a larger context, and understand each other and their backgrounds, and are able to converse in a manner that isn't 'I need an answer on the record in the next five seconds,'" Glover Weiss said.
So she brings together Democrats and Republicans, politicians and reporters — so many so that it's hard to find one who doesn't know her, and like her.
[...]
"The relationship between sources and reporters, if it works perfectly in Washington, reminds me of the old Bugs Bunny cartoon with Sam the sheepdog and the wolf," Dickerson said. "And they're pals. And they come to the field. They clock in. And they spend the rest of the day trying to beat each other's brains out. The whistle blows and they clock out, and they're friends again."
Matalin said that's just the way things get done in D.C.
"I know they all made it look ugly to the [public] beyond the bubble, but it really is then — it's a time-honored way of doing business in any political situation. It was ever thus, back to Machiavelli," she said. "It's good for you; it's good for me; it's good for Democrats; it's good for everybody. It's mostly good for the public."
But in the case for war, it was not good for the public. And in the end it was certainly not good for Libby.
http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=2928458&page=3
-jello
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