His premise is quite basic.
Why do we know that Lewis Libby was Judith Miller's source and Karl Rove Matthew Cooper's confirmatory source? BECAUSE, CONTRARY TO THEIR PROTESTATIONS ABOUT 'SOURCE CONFIDENTIALITY', THEY TALKED. Sure, they put up a fight but ultimately they talked to the grand jury and leaked it all publicly.
Why don't we know about Robert Novak's source? BECAUSE HE TOLD THE GRAND JURY AS REQUIRED BY FEDERAL LAW BUT DIDN'T LEAK IT TO THE PUBLIC LIKE MILLER AND COOPER.
An excerpt:
And did they mention, by the way, that it is a selfless heroism? So vital to our democracy, to our liberties, yea, to our very lives is the principle that a reporter must be able to conceal the identity of a source that nothing can supersede it. No subpoena, no public-safety urgency, no cry for justice. The lips of these titans are sealed.
Unless, of course, it makes for a good story. Then all bets are off.
...
You know them because the journalists decided to tell you. Miller and Cooper both made certain that the public knew every syllable uttered by the sources they've sanctimoniously told us, again and again, they made commitments to shield. And they did it in the worst possible way: in hyper-hyped, autobiographical, self-adulating accounts of their valiant struggle to withhold information from a grand jury despite that nagging inconvenience the rest of us know as the law. Miller, in fact, is planning to cash in with a book about the whole thing, while the previously obscure Cooper has become America's latest fifteen-minute celebrity (whose clock, we can hope, is nearing its last ticks).
A good one. Read it all.
No comments:
Post a Comment