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.
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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.
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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.

posted by Blicero : 10/16/2003 04:34:00 PM