Scooter Libby and the Media Debacle - Fitzgerald did what the Press is supposed to do

[powergirl]

Scooter Libby and the media debacle
by Eric Boehlert

The New York Times made headlines last week when it tapped a new D.C. bureau chief. But if the paper of record really wanted to jump-start its Beltway news operation, maybe it should have tried to lure Patrick Fitzgerald away from the Department of Justice.

Let's face it, as special counsel in charge of investigating the Valerie Plame CIA leak, and now the lead prosecutor in D.C. federal court methodically laying out the damning evidence of perjury, obstruction, and lying against Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, Fitzgerald has consistently shown more interest -- and determination -- in uncovering the facts of the Plame scandal than most Beltway journalists, including the often somnambulant D.C. newsroom of The New York Times.

Indeed, for long stretches, the special counsel easily supplanted the timid D.C. press corps and become the fact-finder of record for the Plame story. It was Fitzgerald and his team of G-men -- not journalists -- who were running down leads, asking tough questions and, in the end, helping inform the American people about possible criminal activity inside the White House.

It's true that Fitzgerald's team had subpoena power that no journalist could match. But reporters in this case had a trump card of their own: inside information. Sadly, most journalists remained mum about the coveted and often damning facts, dutifully keeping their heads down and doing their best to make sure the details never got out about the White House's obsession with discrediting former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV by outing his undercover CIA wife, Valerie Plame.

http://mediamatters.org/columns/200702060006
More at Link
:toast:

[Robbien]

1. Yeah, every single DC pundit knew what was going on here

Just like they know they are downplaying the trial right now.

The fact that this trial is only getting occasional reporting is another media crime.

[enough]

2. Great article:-- worth reading the whole thing.

Scathing damnation of the role of the media.

snip>

For instance, the press often described the Plame leak as a well-kept mystery that had journalists completely stumped. As late as July 12, 2005, ABC's Nightline reported that, "For two years, it's been unknown who told reporters the identity of Valerie Plame," which was just silly. First, it took me about three days in the fall of 2003 to figure out Libby was the likely culprit, and I had no heavyweight sources helping me. Second, here's a partial list of D.C. journalists who had personal, inside information about the case and could have unwrapped the Plame leak mystery, or at least advanced parts of the story in real time: syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak; NBC's Tim Russert, Andrea Mitchell, and David Gregory; MSNBC's Chris Matthews; Time's Matthew Cooper, along with Michael Duffy, John Dickerson, and Viveca Novak; The New York Times' Judith Miller, and The Washington Post's Bob Woodward.

They could have, but none of them did. Instead, at times there was an unspoken race away from the Bush scandal, a collective retreat that's likely unprecedented in modern-day Beltway journalism.

As for mainstream journalists who didn't have inside info, many of them were busy rooting for the White House and sniping at Fitzgerald. In the days and weeks before the Libby indictments were announced in October 2005, it was media elite columnists who urged Fitzgerald to go easy with any charges. The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof (subscription required) didn't want people to "exaggerate" the leaking of Plame's identity, arguing White House insiders probably didn't know she was undercover. ("Negligence rather than vengeance.") Newsweek echoed that defense, insisting that neither Cheney nor Libby ever meant any harm by initiating their Plame whispering campaign. Instead, the newsweekly reported, "It is much more likely they believed that they were somehow safeguarding the republic."

Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen dismissed the criminal investigation as banal and trivial. "The best thing Patrick Fitzgerald could do for his country is get out of Washington, return to Chicago and prosecute some real criminals," he wrote. Fellow Post columnist Michael Kinsley agreed, wondering whether the "whole prosecution is nuts."

snip>

More recently, The Washington Post's David Broder dismissed the entire affair as "overblown" and a "tempest in a teapot," while calling on some journalists to apologize to White House senior adviser Karl Rove for suggesting he was part of the campaign to leak Plame's identity, despite the fact Rove did play a central role in the leaking. And just last week, the Post's Cohen dismissed the Libby trial as "silly," while Kinsley, now at Time, suggested that Libby, by leaking to reporters, was "a martyr of press freedom."

snip>

Much more

[Supersedeas]

3. The Media accomplices need to be exposed...all of them.

[Elidor]

4. The people mentioned do not qualify as reporters

When keeping the truth from the audience is the real agenda, one is merely a propagandist, a paid stooge, a lickspittle. Collectively, they represent the very worst of what passes for journalism in America. And plainly, the business is set up to reward the very worst.

[hughee99]

5. A good article that seems to hit many of the key issues

although I was honestly a little surprised to see that while Mr. Boehlert states he had pegged Libby as the likely culprit right away, the name Richard Armitage was not mentioned once.

[Auntie Bush]

6. So all those LEFT WING MEDIA hounds aka the Liberal Media

sat on the news for years! Tell me again...Why do Rethugs keep repeating the meme that we have a liberal media bias? :shrug:

Also, let's not forget the same Liberal media sat on the information that the Administration was spying on US citizen so as not to efect the outcome of the 2004 election.

The exact same liberal media that persecuted Bill and Hillary Clinton for 8 years. Liberal media! Yeah, tell me about it!

The next person that utters the fact that we have a Liberal Media is going to get Puked in the face. :puke: At least they are going to get a mouthful from me and regret they opened their mouth. Now we can all be armed with facts (talking points)to the contrary that they can't refute.