Libby Exposes the Embarrassment of the Press
07 March 2007 10:25 am by Taylor Marsh
Libby Exposes the Embarrassment of the Press
Paul Gigot and the Wall Street Journal editorial board, joined by others, are bemoaning the Libby verdict, as well as postulating that he actually deserves
a pardon and an apology. They prove why Republicans are adrift and the conservative
movement bankrupt of any moral authority, as well as why the corporate hack pack are hemoragging readers.
Poor Scooter Libby, they whine.
The jury didn\’t know any better, they belch.
It\’s everyone else\’s fault that Libby lied, blaming the world for Libby\’s perjury,
calling it a \”travesty of justice,\” as they parrot Laura Ingraham
last night on Fox, without realizing Mr. Libby\’s fate was always within his
own hands. Next the WSJ is going to tell us that Judy Miller is a saint and
her WMD coverage was masterful, proving that it really all depends on what side
of the political story your opinion springs.
As for the media, most of our brethren were celebrating the conviction yesterday
because it damaged the Bush Administration they loathe. But they too will
pay a price for holding Mr. Fitzgerald\’s coat. The Bush Administration will
soon be history, but the damage Mr. Fitzgerald has done to the ability to
protect media sources and to the willingness of government officials to speak
openly to reporters will last far longer.Mr. Bush will no doubt be advised to wait for the outcome of an appeal and
the end of his Administration to pardon Mr. Libby. We believe he bears some
personal responsibility for this conviction, especially for not policing the
disputes and insubordination in his Administration that made this travesty
possible. The time for a pardon is now. … ..The
Libby Travesty
Mr. Bush owes the former aide a pardon, and an apology.
There is no mention of Valerie Plame anywhere in the wingnut chorus covering
for Scooter Libby today. No mention of the job she did monitoring
WMD, or as a NOC, called the \”holiest
of holies\” inside the agency. Then there is the classic statement that
after Wilson\’s editorial his \”wife was fair game,\” the beauty uttered to Chris Matthews. Behind it all was Scooter Libby,
carrying water for the vice president\’s office to try to turn the attention
away from the bogus story of uranium from Niger, which we now know was just
the tipping point of all the lies out of the White House that were funneled through the press.
But the WSJ thinks Bush owes Mr. Libby an apology and a pardon \”for
not policing the disputes and insubordination in his Administration that made
this travesty possible.\” He evidently owes nothing to the American
people or our Armed Forces for taking us to war on lies Libby was trying to
cover up, at the behest of the vice president. Mr. Bush owes the Wilsons nothing
for targeting them and ruining a career CIA operative\’s 25-year professional life. No, it\’s all
about poor Scooter Libby who had a choice from the outset and made it without
worry.
Guilty verdicts are a bitch.
Lies come easily to the likes of Bush, Cheney, et al. But now we also know
that the Wall Street Journal thinks lies of choice to a grand jury
deserve an apology from the president. When it comes to the facts and truth,
the WSJ editorial board has now proven they\’re no better than Fox. Unfortunately,
they\’ve
got company.
The corporate hack pack is worried about one thing: protecting themselves.
It\’s true that journalists should not be hauled into court and made to give
up sources, but when a case revolves around a classified CIA agent and the smearing
of a man who simply told the truth, it\’s preposterous to think that journalists
and reporters get a pass. When it revolves around issues of war and peace it\’s particularly damning. The cozy relationship between politicians and the
elite media has done a great disservice to this country, especially on the run
up to the war in Iraq. It took Joe Wilson, with little help from the corporate
hack pack, to get the truth out, something the CIA knew all along, but Dick
Cheney\’s office wanted to hide. That\’s the real story here. Just look at Judy
Miller\’s abominable reporting. Think about Bob Woodward\’s silence for so long. But at least he admitted he should have done more work in questioning the run up to war. Now he tells us.
If you saw the recent PBS series on the media, Miller\’s interview was quite alarming.
Stuttering and stammering as she tried to answer Lowell Bergman\’s questions,
Miller wouldn\’t admit to being an \”expert\” on WMD. Odd how that was
her self promoted claim to fame right up until she was snookered by her sources
and didn\’t have the spine to admit it.
Doing some reporting myself, as well as investigating stories, I know all about
protecting sources. But there is such a thing as the public good. That\’s what
the fourth estate is all about. It\’s also why the blogosphere has exploded and
the corporate press is diminishing every day. As we have seen with the Iraq war, protecting sources sometimes
comes at a price to we the people, because if you tell the wrong story on any given
day those inside sources can dry up fast. The corporate press were complicit in the Bush story of war on Iraq and the Libby trial laid them out for all to see. It\’s not a pretty picture, but they have no one to blame but themselves.
No one owes Mr. Libby an apology, though no doubt he will get a pardon sometime
early in 2009. But no one can wipe away the guilty verdict that unmasked the
smear campaign orchestrated out of the vice president\’s office in order to silence
an Administration critic who caught Mr. Bush in a lie. It wasn\’t just any lie
either. A lie about uranium from Niger, which the CIA had expunged once from
a speech, but was utilized again anyway to make the president\’s case for war. We are to believe this was an accident?
The corporate hack pack has been exposed through the Libby trial and they don\’t like it. Sure, there are exceptions, but it\’s easy to spot who those people are by their work. They actually take the time to question authority: Dan Froomkin, Dana Priest, James Risen, among others. But most elite media outlets and their reporters, including the once most respected among them, Bob Woodward and Judy Miller, even Tim Russert who we learned through the Libby trial was a Cheney favorite, were
used to spin an Administration friendly story for the war, which culminated
in the leaking of a classified CIA agent\’s name, the smearing of a whistle blower
who outed a president\’s lies, and the revelation of complicity of the elite media press accounts that now have many of these same outlets squealing like stuffed pigs because
the people have now found out that they don\’t serve our interests, but instead
prefer to be pals with all the president\’s people. Two words: boo hoo.
