Grey Lady Down

Dan Kennedy writes about Michael Isikoff taking TIME and the NY Times to task for not following up on the Plame story. Isikoff has a very checkered past in these matters, but in this case he is correct. The fact that TIME and The NY Times dropped the ball on these stories because their reporters refused to reveal their sources is really unconscionable. They should have pursued the stories more vigorously, not less.

If a reporter has a confidential source who is giving them backround information, they are supposed to, you know, go look for things like documents and other witnesses so they can actually publish a story. Matt Cooper, to his credit, did at least write one story and he took the proper inference from the leak — that the white house was trying to discredit Wilson. The magazine then failed to properly follow-up and even withheld evidence in fear of swinging an election!

Miller never writing a story at all and the Times treating the whole thing like a pile of stinking garbage in which they didn’t want to dip their finely manicured hands is just shocking.

Arianna excoriates both today and asks the following very pertinent questions:

And so we don’t forget what this story is really about, and given that the aluminum tubes crap that Miller put on the front page of the New York Times was being heavily promoted by Cheney, how much of that bogus information came to Miller via Libby?

And here are a few questions for the Times:

Had a Plame/Wilson story been assigned to Miller or not?

What, if anything, did she say about the story to anyone at the paper at the time… and what did they say back?

Why did the Times hold back the story about Miller’s release and let multiple other news sources scoop them? Were they trying to miss the evening news cycle and avoid the overnight thrashing their spin has rightly received?

It would be nice if they spent the same amount of time handwringing about this as they did that puerile stunt by Jayson Blair, but I’m not holding my breath. When a newpaper is partially responsible for sending a country to war on false pretenses, they tend to circle the wagons. I thought the days of William Randooph Hearst were long dead history, but maybe not so much.

Update:

Just to be clear — in my post below where I say that Libby’s lawyers had better shut up, it was not because I thought their version of events with respect to the waivers was necessarily correct or incorrect. It was because it’s never a good idea for lawyers to anger witnesses who are going to appear before a grand jury the next day.

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