Miller Time

From Marie @ The Left Coaster

excerpt:

The facts that we have known for two years are that an administration official disclosed the identity of a CIA covert operative to the press. That’s a criminal act. It puts both the agent and the sources used by the agent at risk. This act should tell us that the Bush administration will stop at nothing to get back at those who dare to oppose them, and it likely put a chill through the ranks of civil servants in sensitive positions.

One frequent excuse the Judy and Matt apologists use is, “What about Novak?” Maybe Novak spilled the beans, but without corroboration the case is too weak. Maybe Novak took the fifth. Maybe Novak is a suspect. Maybe Novak received the information second-hand and doesn’t know the identity of the person that outed Plame. Novak is such a slime ball and self-promoter that it’s not difficult for me to imagine that he purposely let readers assume that he had the inside track with the administration. Maybe Matt and Judy were his sources. Too many possibilities to consider.

The Bush administration is very good at using the media. Journalists have become really bad at evaluating sources and the information they supply. So bad that they have become patsies for Cheney and Rove. Nothing leaks out of the Bush WH that isn’t planned. Those administration sources that journalists think they have developed access to are worthless because they are agents of the administration. Sy Hersh knows that quality sources are rare and relationships with them don’t materialize overnight. Sy would never have fallen for a con-man like Chalabi. The conservative media machine came of age in the 1990’s. Like a hydra, it spread throughout almost all news organizations and learned how to compromise them. Wen Ho Lee and Troopergate demonstrated that the NYT is not only not mighty but also useful. They chase phantom stories and ignore real ones. Dangle a war in front of their noses and journalists began salivating at the opportunity to make a name for themselves. So much so that they became war cheerleaders for Bush. Getting individual journalists to have a vested and unacknowledged interest in the same policy that an administration desires is the highest form of media manipulation.

Miller and Cooper are no Woodward and Bernstein circa 1972. They would have been a dream come true for Nixon because they would happily have shoveled WH spin and disinformation. They would have been part of the cover-up and have claimed journalistic privilege not to identify their sources.

Judy's Turn to Cry