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WASHINGTON — Then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage met with Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward in mid-June 2003, the same time the reporter has testified an administration official talked to him about CIA employee Valerie Plame. Mr. Armitage's official State Department calendars, provided to The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act, show a one-hour meeting marked “private appointment” with Mr. Woodward on June 13, 2003. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has investigated whether Bush administration officials intentionally revealed Ms. Plame's identity as a one-time CIA covert operative to punish her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, for criticizing the administration's...

"WHERE HAVE ALL THE READERS GONE?" headlined the August edition of Washingtonian magazine's Post-watch page, in reporting that the Washington Post's average daily circulation has – in just one year – dropped 23,814 – or 64 losses per day. "We can guess. We can speculate. We can estimate," said Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie, who did not deny circulation was dropping. Newspaper analyst John Morton noted: "Theoretically, this is the best newspaper market in the country. It's surprising that the Post is losing ground like this." The Post, now down to 772,553 daily, is this nation's fifth largest. Washingtonian magazine...

What to think of the quite astonishing revelation that Bob Woodward was told by administration sources—not Scooter Libby or Karl Rove, it seems clear—that Joseph Wilson's wife worked at the CIA, and told a month before what Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said was the first revelation by an administration source, Libby, to a member of the press? Here's the story from yesterday's Post on Woodward's testimony, and here's Woodward's statement, printed next to the story on the jump page. Here's the story by the Post's excellent media reporter Howard Kurtz on Woodward's apology to Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie for...

Newsweek is reporting that the Valerie Plame affair thickened last week after Bob Woodward admitted that he "had been told about Plame and her role before Novak had, but that in order to protect his source and avoid a subpoena from the grand jury, he had told no one, not even his editor, Leonard Downie." Woodward did not reveal his source, but insists that when the leaker's identity is made known, it will be seen as "much ado about very little." That's pretty much the same thing that Robert Novak says.The article suggests that former deputy secretary of state Richard...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Washington Post editor Bob Woodward tried to fend off criticism Wednesday over revelations that he didn't reveal to his bosses that a top Bush administration official had told him the name of a CIA operative. "Journalism is a contact sport," Woodward told The Associated Press Wednesday. Referring to criticism he experienced during his reporting on the 1970s Watergate scandal, Woodward said, "I was 29 when people who really knew how to shoot were around." Woodward said he apologized to Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. for not telling him until last month that he had learned about...

News Media Protest Lack of Access at Marine Base By Sally Buzbee Associated Press Writer Published: Dec 5, 2001 WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. military officials in Afghanistan prevented journalists from witnessing the transfer of injured soldiers who were victims of the errant B-52 bomb that killed three special forces soldiers on Wednesday. Several news organizations questioned the restrictions on the journalists, the only media that have been allowed to accompany and cover U.S. forces based in Afghanistan. The incident is a troubling example of the news media's "lack of direct contact with American forces who've actually participated in the war," ...

Abu Ghraib Images Spark Debate By Patrick Goodenough CNSNews.com International Editor February 16, 2006 (CNSNews.com) - A decision by an Australian television network to release more images of detainee abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison has set off a debate over the willingness of many media organizations to carry the gruesome pictures when they chose not to publish controversial cartoons depicting Mohammed. In explaining their decision not to reproduce the cartoons -- blamed for protests and violence in a number of Muslim countries -- some media representatives argued that doing so would unnecessarily inflame an already tense situation. At a...

NEW YORK -- Coverage of the Sept. 11 attacks, their aftermath and the war on terrorism won eight of the 14 Pulitzer Prizes on Monday to become the most dominant single news story in the awards' history. The New York Times won seven of the prizes -- six of them related to the tragedy -- to set a record for a single year. Newsroom celebrations, particularly in New York and Washington, were tempered by the memory of one of the worst tragedies in the nation's history. At The Wall Street Journal, staffers remembered reporter Daniel Pearl, who was slain in...

   Bob Woodward is one of the most admired reporters in the world, so it was particularly disappointing to learn that for two years he withheld important information about the CIA leak investigation that led to the indictment of Vice President Cheney's top aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. It appears Woodward may have been the first reporter to learn the identity of Valerie Plame, a former covert employee of the Central Intelligence Agency and wife of administration critic Joseph Wilson. Yet during special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's two-year investigation into whether Plame's identity...

... By being the first and, largely, the only publication pursuing the Edwards story through his denials of the affair and of fathering a child out of wedlock, The Enquirer is under consideration for a Pulitzer Prize, and it has strong support for its bid from other journalists. The success has Mr. Levine considering opening a Washington bureau to look for more dirt among politicians. It’s a curious time for The Enquirer to be soaring. Its parent company, American Media, nearly went bankrupt last year. A former editor claims the company pressured Tiger Woods into appearing on the cover of...

Pincus: Woodward 'Asked Me to Keep Him Out' of Plame Reporting By Joe Strupp Published: November 16, 2005 12:45 PM ET NEW YORK Walter Pincus, the longtime Washington Post reporter and one of several journalists who testified in the Valerie Plame case, said he believed as far back as 2003 that Bob Woodward had some involvement in the case but he did not pursue the information because Woodward asked him not to. "He asked me to keep him out of the reporting and I agreed to do that," Pincus said today. His comments followed a Post story today about Woodward's...

The book appears to be meticulously researched and reported. It is replete with copious footnotes, a detailed index and two appendices. First-hand witnesses are named and quoted verbatim to support each specific, shocking charge. Each charge of false heroics is logically presented. Theauthors quote the official Navy citation and then present the purported eyewitnesstestimony that refutes the official finding. The witnesses who are summoned forth are officers and men who served simultaneously with Mr. Kerry in Coastal Division 11 and purport to be eyewitnesses to the events in question. And yet, there is another group of men, the sailors who...

Technology will soon transfer the power to set the national conversation from a few in NY/DC to a multitude of opinion leaders It is no coincidence that each day in America there seems to be only one set of national news stories and angles reported by every outlet, despite the infinite number of stories and angles available. It starts the night before, when the most authoritative papers in the countryÂ’s centers of money (NY Times) and power (Washington Post) swap drafts of front pages, agree on what the public ought to be talking about, then publish their synchronized stories. After...

<p>April 30, 2002—They lie to us. We know they're lying. They know we know. We know they know we know. So what is the problem with the American media? More specifically, what's the problem with The Washington Post?</p> <p>It's easy to excuse the behavior of most of the media. American newspapers have been reduced to canned astrology columns, Little League scores and restaurant reviews. Television "news" is mostly salacious tales like Monica and Chandra.</p>

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The Washington Post's ombudsman rebuked journalist Bob Woodward on Sunday for withholding what he knew about the CIA leak probe from his editor and for making public statements that were dismissive of the investigation without disclosing his own involvement. One of the best-known investigative reporters in the United States, Woodward revealed last week that he testified under oath to special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that a senior Bush administration official told him in mid-June 2003 about CIA operative Valerie Plame's position at the agency. Fitzgerald announced a few days later in court papers that his two-year criminal investigation...

A traitor in the midst By Cal Thomas Apr 25, 2006 What do you call someone who, in violation of her oath, reveals government secrets to a reporter, who then prints them and exposes a clandestine operation designed to get information from suspected terrorists that could save American lives? Here is what one dictionary says about that word: "One who betrays another's trust or is false to an obligation or duty." The word so defined is traitor. The Central Intelligence Agency fired an intelligence officer after determining she leaked classified information to a Washington Post reporter about secret overseas prisons...

WASHINGTON -- The CIA's decision to fire a top intelligence analyst accused of leaking classified information became a political issue almost immediately after it became public last week. The officer was a senior analyst nearing retirement, Mary O. McCarthy, who the agency said leaked information to news organizations about a secret network of CIA prisons. McCarthy was once responsible for guarding some of the nation's most sensitive secrets as a senior aide for the National Security Council, The New York Times reported in today's editions, citing several current and former government officials. In that role, McCarthy often focused on ways...

WE'VE SAID from the start of the investigation into the leak of Valerie Plame's identity that if administration officials deliberately set out to unmask a secret agent, they should be punished. But we've also said that, absent evidence of such behavior, criminalizing communication by officials to journalists would run counter to the public interest. Special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald's investigation is continuing -- he said yesterday he's going back to a grand jury -- and new facts may come to light. But the principle remains valid: It's not in the public interest for reporters to be forced to reveal their...

NEW YORK As a collection of controversial cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad circulates online and through some European publications, prompting numerous acts of violence abroad, nearly all U.S. newspapers have chosen not to publish the cartoons. Although most American papers have covered the issue, with many running Page One stories, most contend the cartoons are too offensive to run, and can be properly reported through descriptions. While some have linked to the images on the Web, others are considering publishing one or more of them next week. Meanwhile, the Philadelphia Inquirer, day after complaining that The Associated Press should at...

"Too often, we wear liberalism on our sleeve and are intolerant of other lifestyles and opinions," an editor working for the Washington Post's Sunday "Book World" section charged in a contribution to a daily internal critique of the newspaper quoted by Howard Kurtz on Monday. Marie Arana disclosed that "if you work here, you must be one of us. You must be liberal, progressive, a Democrat. I've been in communal gatherings in The Post, watching election returns, and have been flabbergasted to see my colleagues cheer unabashedly for the Democrats." Kurtz quoted Arana in his October 3 "Media Notes" column...