Now that federal investigators are now demanding to know who leaked sealed documents to The Plain Dealer, the kind of documents Clifton predicted in a column three weeks ago would spark an inquiry, the veteran editor contends he should never had revealed that his paper had the confidential information.
"It set everything in motion," an exasperated Clifton told E&P Friday, just a day after a federal prosecutor asked a judge to order that the sources of the leaked documents be revealed. "If I kept it to myself, it wouldn't have ultimately set the fuse. I think I was wrong to think that when I revealed it, it wouldn't become the cause celebre that it has become in the media. ...
"I thought that it would help to dramatize to people the consequences" of the Judith Miller/Matthew Cooper case, he said. "Instead, it became a simplistic discussion of a chickenshit editor and a source he was protecting."
Now Clifton Wishes He Had Kept His Mouth Shut, Editor and Publisher
Did you ever see a Roadrunner cartoon? I'm sure you have. The coyote is a a genius, it says so right on his business card that was inevitably displayed to the audience at some point in the numerous RR Warner Bros. shorts. He has a plan so brilliant that there is no way that he can be defeated. It's not enough to just catch the bird, he has to prove a point in doing it. "I'm doing this the way I am doing it because I am smarter than you are." And so he launches into his complex rube goldbergian constructs... because they cannot fail, for he is a certified genius... and the elaborate mess always ends when the coyote crushes himself in the process.
Doug Clifton reminds me very much of Wyle E. Coyote right about now.
"I've got a couple of stories," Doug Clifton of the Cleveland Plain Dealer basically told us, "but I can't tell you about them, because they are sourced from leaked confidential documents... and so, because of the Judith Miller jailing... I ain't gonna tell you those stories. No sir. I don't want to get the Paper in trouble, or force some reporter on our staff to have to give up his or her source for these documents." Doug... think about what you just said.
Doh! (and Doug's hand smacks into his forehead loudly... two or three weeks later when the Feds come a knockin'.)
I remember reading the article from the man thinking 'hmmmm, you say that you won't break the two stories, because they are sourced from leaked confidential documents, yet... you announced you had such documents in your possession in the first place? What about other newspapers? Won't they get curious and start digging?' Unbelievable. The story itself is never why the Feds come looking for sources, the confidential documents or testimony behind the story are. There was no need to put this information out there, or course. There are plenty of ways to take a strong pro-confidential source stance without shooting yourself in the foot by declaring that you are in possession of something that you 'shouldn't have' according to a Federal prosecutor. But thats just it. It wasn't enough to take a strong universal pro-confidentiality at all times at all costs stance, (which I have no problem with, argue away if that is how you feel) he had to 'teach us a lesson'. See, because of 'x', you don't get 'y', because we need 'z' to run it! Cue sirens in the street outside of the PD building, and a wide-eyed editor looking confused. Because, after raising the issue, another Ohio paper spilled the beans about what you were not spilling the beans about.
"It is inevitable that some alternative newspaper, especially the Scene, would do it and we had no choice but to go forward [and publish the story]," he said. "The Scene changed the situation."
Yes, yes it did. They did their job. Why? Because you made a big stink about how you were not going to do yours. If the Feds didn't know about your confidential documents before, they sure as hell do now.
Clifton also stressed that his initial decision to hold the story is not as unusual as some of the coverage has suggested. "People are deceiving themselves if they think editors aren't making these decisions all along," he said. "Every day editors are deciding not to run stories based on varying reasons. They just don't usually talk about them."
That is absolutely fine, you are an editor and therefore you make editorial decisions about the content of the Cleveland Plain Dealer all the time. But you couldn't let your argument speak for itself, you had to put a little frosting on it to make that soapbox an additional soapbox higher with moral superiority. You could have turned the editorial page of the Cleveland Plain Dealer into an anvil that hammered and shamed the powerful bastards who put Miller in the shitter, but instead you turned your eye on making the powerless and the small feel guilty and denied and burned yourself in the process. It was journalists who finally forced the Republicans in Congress to pull the plug on Nixon. Well, I've read the Plain Dealer's coverage of the Libby-Rove-Hughes-Fleisher-GOPer-to-be-named-later scandal. Enjoy the taste of that foot you just shoved in your mouth.
If you have to wonder why 'Free Judith Miller!' t-shirts are as rare in Cleveland Ohio as 'Free Zsa Zsa Gabor!' t-shirts were in 1989, read your own rag. Hell, read the NY Times, too!
Somewhere out there, a dupe reporter is in jail because some cowardly little slime doesn't care that she's in jail on the principle of the thing. That cowardly little slime's minions in the know don't care that she is in jail either while we are at it. SHAME THE BASTARD OR BASTARDS INTO COMING FORWARD OR THE ADMINISTRATION INTO GIVING THEM UP! YOUR BLACK INK ISN'T DELIVERED BY THE CUP, GENIUS! You have no idea how hard it is for me to say that. I loathe Ms. Miller, and you. She isn't down because she broke the Pentagon Papers or Watergate, she's down because she's protecting our generation's third-rate burglars. You are in trouble because you are apparently an idiot who caught heat by trying to avoid heat. How the hell did that happen in the post-Watergate post-IranContra era of 2005????
There was never anything stopping you, or your fellow newspaper editors and cable news directors who have given so many free passes to the powers that be in the name of 9-11, from funneling all of your rage into holding the slimeball behind this mess accountable for what happened to Ms. Miller.
Nope. Your first instinct is apparently to feel sorry for yourself, and declare you are holding important scoops, becuase you might get in trouble for doing your job. Then... and this is the best part... you whine when people call you a coward and a chickenshit! Priceless!
Here's my question to you Mr. Clifton:
Do you really think that so many people out here in the real world, who truly need you and your collegues more than they can ever imagine, would have responded with an 'eh' and a shrug instead of turning justifiably red in the face outrage...
if you, and so many people like you in your trade... spoke truth to power with defiance, instead of blandly recording and transcribing talking points like PR people (except, as in the case with the White House Press Pool, when you feel personally insulted) or folding like wimps in the face of real challengers and danger?
I don't give a fuck about Judy Miller, or you. The only reason Judith Miller's case and her being in jail pisses me off is because of how it will effect The Toledo Blade, The SJ Mercury News, the New Yorker, Village Voice, Boston Phoenix and other newspapers who actually practice journalism fearlessly like the guardians of the helpless and the small I always imagined. I am completely torn up inside about all of this, because I know that no matter how much I really loathe you and Ms Miller, this is bigger than you.
But if in the end, it all goes down the shitter and you want to know who's to blame... be sure to add a mirror to the end of the list. I'll take my blame. I should have been as up in arms as anyone, but you make it so hard to take up the sword and go to the wall for you its amazing. If not a mirror, then at least a tiny pink and yellow umbrella to shield you from that rock you managed to drop on yourself as the Rove Runner 'meep-meeps!' away laughing.