| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Harry Hope" |
| Date: |
19 Oct 2003 12:30:46 PM |
| Object: |
Not surprisingly Bush's ***** press ignores the CIA agent scandal. |
From The Prospect, 10/16/03:
http://www.prospect.org/print-friendly/webfeatures/2003/10/tomasky-m-10-16.html
Papered Over
The country's leading editorial pages are ignoring the Plame scandal.
By Michael Tomasky
If you've been feeling that the Bush administration may be skating
free of having to wrestle with the Valerie Plame controversy and are
wondering why this is happening, let me submit one possible
explanation:
The major media are putting no pressure whatsoever on the
administration, or the president, to do anything.
See, back in the days when our leading journalistic institutions were
bothering to do their jobs, there used to be these things in
newspapers called "editorials."
They demanded integrity and honest government of presidential
administrations.
They would bellow -- often a little pompously or earnestly, but, on
balance, in the public interest -- that, say, President Johnson needed
to explain to the American people what he knew about the risks of
Vietnam before 1965, or that President Nixon had better come clean
about what happened in Cambodia (or at the Democratic National
Committee's Watergate headquarters).
Back then, editorials thundered.
Today?
They still exist, of course, but now they whisper into a shoebox,
essentially hoping that no one will hear them.
The bully pulpit has become the 98-pound weakling's corner, and the
government reaps the benefits of the shrinkage.
The New York Times and The Washington Post are still our leading
newspapers, and no doubt they consider themselves guardians of the
public interest.
So one might think that when a scandal of this potential magnitude
appears, they would rush in to protect that interest.
An undercover agent's identity was exposed, in possible violation of
the law and in obvious violation of the old-fashioned morality that
conservatives supposedly revere.
If ever there was a moment for a newspaper's editorial page to demand
that an administration take actions or offer explanations, it's a
moment like this one.
But this is what has happened: In the nearly three weeks now since the
story broke on Sept. 28 -- that would be 18 editions of each
newspaper, as I write these words -- the Times has written all of one
editorial on the Plame-Joseph Wilson-Robert Novak matter.
The Post has published two.
OK, there's a lot going on in the world to write about, and one or two
might be defensible -- as long as they were tough and called for some
specific action from the president.
So let's have a look.
The Times editorial was reasonably tough -- not on George W. Bush but
on John Ashcroft.
That's fine, but it's safe; for a liberal paper, going after Ashcroft
requires about as much courage as taking issue with Pat Robertson.
As to Bush himself, or the White House itself, the editorial offered
up some adumbrative language about the president's getting
"dangerously close to the territory in which the cover-up eclipses the
offense," but it made no specific call on the White House to do a
single thing.
Further -- an amusing aside for those of you who remember this same
editorial page during the 1990s, under Howell Raines -- the editorial
advised that there was at this point no need for an independent
counsel to look into the matter.
That, the Times wrote, would be bad, bad, bad, because it might turn
into a replay of "the meandering Kenneth Starr" probe of the Clinton
administration.
You'll recall that the Times editorial page considered Starr's
investigation anything but meandering at the time.
Over at the Post, meanwhile, they've demonstrated, contra Mies van der
Rohe, that more is less.
That paper's two editorials on Plame make the lone Times piece look
like Émile Zola attacking the anti-Semites of the French army.
The first editorial, from Oct. 1, wanders hither and yon, finally
concluding that "the president may have an opportunity to show whether
he means what he says."
By doing what, however, the paper doesn't say.
The second editorial, published two days later, was mostly devoted to
the true but hardly pressing point that members of both parties are
hypocritical when it comes to calling for an independent counsel.
It also offered the opinion that Ashcroft "has handled the current
affair reasonably so far."
So:
In the face of a disclosure by the now-infamous "two senior
administration officials" that may have put an agent's life and
ongoing covert operations relating to weapons of mass destruction at
risk, our two leading newspapers scratch their collective chins and
muse.
What should these papers be doing?
Lots of things.
Most dramatically, they could call on Bush, if he genuinely wants to
learn the leaker's (or leakers') identity, to order his staff to
release all reporters from their confidentiality agreements.
We'd get to the bottom of this in a flash, and the journalists would
be violating no ethical charge.
The public interest would be served.
Short of that, the editorial pages could be demanding a specific
timetable from the White House and from Ashcroft; or they could be
keeping pressure on Bush to make some public demonstrations that his
White House and his Department of Justice are genuinely pursuing this
matter.
On Wednesday, the Times itself reported that "senior criminal
prosecutors" at the Justice Department and officials at the FBI are
alarmed that Ashcroft hasn't recused himself or appointed a special
prosecutor.
It'll be worth watching to see whether the editorial page backs up the
paper's own tough reporting -- or undercuts it with more editorial
equivocations.
Editorial pages can't change the world, but they often get results
when they squawk loud enough.
A few weeks ago, for example, the Post noted that Bush hadn't had a
press conference in a while; voila, he had one the next day.
I said in this space last week that if Bush really wants to find out
who the leakers are, he can do it quickly.
These two great newspapers don't have quite that power, but they
certainly have a lot.
Or used to, back when they used to use it.
_____________________________________________________
Makes ya wonder how much Bush (Karl Rove) is paying the ***** press
for its silence.
Harry
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| User: "Killer Pretzel" |
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| Title: Re: Not surprisingly Bush's ***** press ignores the CIA agent scandal. |
19 Oct 2003 12:45:49 PM |
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Harry Hope <rivrvu@ix.netcom.com> wrote in
news:shi5pv0pntaih1ni9p00ob01uj7gpe74o4@4ax.com:
From The Prospect, 10/16/03:
http://www.prospect.org/print-friendly/webfeatures/2003/10/tomasky-m-10
-16.html
Papered Over
The country's leading editorial pages are ignoring the Plame scandal.
Maybe if Bush had had sex with her, they'd be more interested.
--
"There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas,
probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on -
shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again."
-George WMD Bush, Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002
"Don't be fooled again"
-Me, August 1, 2003.
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