Posted on 07/17/2005 8:38:16 PM PDT by blogblogginaway
It's a civil war in Washington. The combatants have an eye-for-an-eye mentality. The partisanship is heated and nasty.
Republicans versus Democrats? Nah. This one pits the media against the White House.
It's a war the media can't win, and shouldn't wage.
The intense grilling White House reporters inflicted on presidential spokesman Scott McClellan last week over whether political guru Karl Rove leaked the name of a CIA operative was no ordinary give-and-take. It was a hostile hectoring that revealed much of the mainstream press for what it has become: the opposition party.
Forget fairness, or even the pretense of it. With one of its own locked up - Judith Miller of The New York Times - much of the Beltway gang has declared war on the White House.
Reporters apparently have decided Democrats aren't up to the job. Can't blame them. With Dems reduced to Howard Dean's rants and Hillary Clinton's juvenile jab that President Bush looks like Mad magazine's Alfred E. Neuman, somebody has to offer a substantive alternative. The press has volunteered.
That the mainstream media are basically liberals with press passes has been documented by virtually every study that measures reporters' political identification and issue positions. But bias has now slopped over into blatant opposition, a stance the media will regret. Instead of providing unvarnished facts obtained by aggressive but fair-minded reporting, the media will be reduced to providing comfort food to ideological comrades.
Already held in lower esteem by the public than lawyers and Congress, the press risks looking like a special-interest group. Its claims to represent "the American people," as one McClellan inquisitor did, are easily ignored when it serves as an echo chamber for the anti-Bush.
Indeed, as soon as Monday's bash-by-press session ended, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., called on Rove to resign. If everybody resigned when Kerry demanded it, Washington would be empty.
In fairness, the media have many reasons to feel frustrated. The Bush White House has not only restricted information, but has aggressively moved against traditional press privileges. In the past year, about 25 reporters have been subpoenaed or questioned in courts about their sources, according to the Newspaper Association of America.
The most famous case has seen The Times' Miller sent to prison for up to four months after she refused to disclose who in the government talked to her about CIA agent Valerie Plame.
A federal prosecutor is probing whether a crime was committed by someone who blew Plame's secret status. Rove has emerged as the latest press suspect; his lawyer denies any wrongdoing.
Miller - a former colleague of mine - has taken her punishment with grace. Her husband, book editor Jason Epstein, told Editor & Publisher magazine, "She was quite prepared to take the consequences and the judge had no choice, she understood that." Epstein said Miller believed she had to protect her source, even if that meant jail.
"I don't see how it could have been avoided because the law is the law," he said. "She exhausted her appeals and had no place left to go."
What a refreshing, adult point of view. Here's hoping it spreads. Then the press can get back to reporting on the president instead of fighting him.
• Goodwin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Daily News. Send e-mail to Mgoodwinedit.nydailynews.com.
Would this happen to be the same Kerry who outed an actual, undercover CIA agent himself?
Eye to eye, nah, more like 10R to 1D; just like the Nav after the fighter school was implemented. I believe we are locked and loaded for the judicial fight. I can't wait to see the swimmer, leaky, and h-plugs. Be still my heart.
"It's a war the media can't win, and shouldn't wage."
The author clearly suffers from Limbaugh Echo Syndrome.
Could minor Ambassador Joe Wilson himself have been the source in blowing his own Wife's "cover" (even if she had not been a covert CIA agent at the time of the alleged "leaks")?
It is distinctly possible, (though it may be unlikely that Joe Wilson himself directly was NY Times Judith Miller's source), since Joe Wilson himself evidently routinely bragged openly to strangers about her CIA employment, prior to such "cover" being "blown" in the press.
Here's an example of Joe's apparently routine and open bragging about Valerie being a "CIA agent," which became known directly to me over a year ago:
He certainly bragged about it per a famous and highly reliable source's (named below) account of his own face-to-face encounter with Amb. Joe Wilson prior to Valerie Plame's "outing" as a CIA agent/employee.
Based upon a personal conversation (we were in a small group eating; it was NOT an "off the record") I had with eminent historian Victor Davis Hanson (we were at a luncheon table together during a trip to Europe), it appeared entirely possible that Joe Wilson himself was the (or one source, if not the original one) possible source in revealing his own wife's status as a CIA agent or employee.
Victor Davis Hanson (Wilson presumably knew Victor Davis Hanson wrote regularly for NRO (National Review Online), had done OpEds for the Wall street Journal, and other publications, and had his own Website with a widespread following) said he (VDH) & Joe Wilson were both in the same "Green Room" before a televised debate-discussion on Iraq, etc. and Joe first warned the TV make-up person not to get powder on his $14,000 Rolex watch, then he bragged to Victor about several things (possessions and trips to Aspen, etc.), like his expensive car (I think it was a Mercedes), and then bragged about his beautiful ("hot") wife who, Joe Wilson said (braggingly) was a CIA operative.
I asked Victor Davis Hanson Why he didn't write up this account.(?) He replied that Joe Wilson would probably simply deny it, since only he (VDH) & Joe Wilson were in the Green Room together before the broadcast.
However, it is now easy to surmise that Joe Wilson is a crass, materialistic, self-promoting, vain, egotistical, bragaddocio-opportunist, so this account is perfectly consistent with Valerie Plame's TWO photo shoots in Vanity Fair.
and this might well be exactly what Dubya was hoping they'd resort to. Strategery...
For anyone who has not heard or has a very short memory, Kerry not only betayed his country and fellow soldiers in time of war, by gave aid & comfort to the enemy in a time of war while also serving in uniform.
So how's that for "fairness & unbiased" in the Mainstream Media eh?
They are all over Karl Rove's allegedly outing of an CIA agent (which is blatantly false) but so blissfully ignoring the man who caused untold death & suffering to our US troops by his consorting with the communist enemies.
The Dems, the MSM. the talking Heads and even Wilson himself are all entagled in their own LIES -- And it SHOWS!! The Real Lying Liars have stood up to be recognized - as if we didn't know!!
Now, the way Matt Cooper is acting does make Millr seem more honorable. He just seems like a publicity whore. HE SHOULD HAVE TESTIFIED AND THEN GONE BACK TO KEEPING HIS MOUTH SHUT.
After the way these fools have behaved over this, if I were running that White House, they'd never get another word out of any of MY people. Ever.
Then they'd REALLY carp about how closed-mouthed this administration is.
It is the strategy of the Vietnam War!! They keep pounding and pounding with the same untruths and half truths. It worked for them before many times and they think it will work again here in the US!!
These are the New World Order crowd, including Bush!!
Kerry should resign unless he signs and sends in his Form 180.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
If he would have just stuffed secret documents down his pants then no one would have said a word...
There are a lot of private investigators & police experts who post or lurk here....my question is "how long would it have taken you to discover where Valerie Wilson worked?" I think with a criss-cross & a phone, it would have taken an hour at most. Certainly a couple of days of observing her drive to/from hdqtrs would have confirmed.
It sounds like she was "out" but still covered as covert due to a beuracratic foul-up in not changing her status.
And a couple of other questions:
What the heck kind of operation is the CIA running? Didn't Wilson have to sign any kind of confidentiality agreement before he was handed this plum assignment? If so, what crime did he commit with HIS NYTs article?
By all reports, Wilson never wrote a report on his "Niger Vacation"---how much did we the people pay him for this adventure?
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