I know it's Supreme Court Appointment Discussion day, but before we leave all the recent commentary on the Plame case, I want to unburden myself of one more teensy rant on this issue.
All the Plame discussion in recent days has, appropriately, been over the obligations of the press to anonymous sources, and the likely effect of the de facto affirming of the DC court decision denying relief to Cooper and Miller.
In the meantime, who's covering the root story, i.e., the identity of the leaker? The answer is: no one.
We can all argue about whether Miller (since Time magazine is going to turn over Cooper's notes, after yesterday, she's the only holdout)should spill her beans (or be compelled to do so). But I hope we all agree that the identity of the leaker is still a MAJOR news story, and that pursuit of this story is not only a proper activity of other press who have no relationship of confidentialtiy to this "source", it is in fact their journalistic duty, their obligation to the public, to follow this story.
Except no one is. Just on a lark, I called the national desk of the New York Times this week and asked how many reporters they had working on this story, on uncovering the identity of the leaker. The Gray Lady has after all been most self-righteously aggrieved over the pursuit of their reporter, Miller, stating repeatedly that they are shocked, shocked at the chilling effect this will have on the first amendment and their ability to bring real news to "news audiences." But certainly, even as they try to protect Miller, they could also be covering this story to the best of their ability.
But they have not. As you may have guessed, the number of reporters assigned to this story by the Times is rather small. In fact, it is ZERO (by their own account).
Now I don't care what you think about the Miller and Cooper cases or the recent court decisions bearing on them. It simply cannot be true that a paper, having had one of its reporters enter into an agreement of protection with a source, must therefore avoid covering a major news story involving this source altogether.
The logical extension of that absurdity would be that anyone who was about to be in some very public hot water could simply ring up the major media, become a source on some bullshit aspect of the hot water they are about to be in, and then, whether the story was picked up or not, become immune from further press scrutiny.
But more broadly, it is the journalistic equivalent of Ben Suc (if memory serves) -- the Viet Namese village that had to be destroyed "to be saved." Here, seemingly in order to protect the public's ability to get information, the paper foreswears getting the public information. Again, I'm not talking about burning the source in any way. I'm talking about doing their jobs and following a story with good old fashioned journalism.
This is the aspect of this whole episode I find most disturbing (in terms of the press). It is one thing to go to jail for one's own source. It is another for the entire profession to enter a conspiracy of silence to protect one other person's source.
If you were a working reporter and thought you could break this story, wouldn't you want to? Wouldn't you talk to Judith Miller's hairdresser, her doorman, her colleagues, her relatives? Wouldn't you sift through her garbage? This leaker burned a national security asset -- during wartime -- for spite. He/she is apparently deep inside the US government. Yet the press simply has abandoned any curiosity about this person, or about the failure of the Bush administration to bring him/her to account.
If you want to imagine what Watergate would have been like without Woodward and Bernstein, witness the Plame incident. (In fact, the NYT was largely absent in Watergate too).
I urge everyone who agrees that the Times (among others) should be covering this story to call or write or email or send carrier pigeons or whatever else you can do to them, and tell them to COVER THIS FREAKING STORY. After all, what good is it to protect the freedom of the press, if you have no story to print?