Plame Affair
By Sensible Mom
I've posted virtually nothing about the Plame affair mainly because I was on a self-imposed blogging vacation this summer when the action heated up and also because Tom McGuire of Just One Minute has been doing a yeoman's job covering it.
That said, what bothers me the most about this case is the NYT's coverage of it. Over the summer, their coverage was full of innuendo suggesting that Karl Rove was the villian in the case. Yet they never properly covered or reported on Miller's actions or their own knowledge of her source (or sources). Every article could be summed up as such: Miller was a martyr, the Bush administration was bad.
Yet it wouldn't be a stretch to assume that at least Miller's editor knew who her source was (Cooper's editor at Time knew his), and this is where their reporting on themselves has got to be a violation of ethics. No matter how one looks at their reporting, it indicates a lack of integrity on the part of the NYT:
Either the NYT knew who Miller's source was or they didn't. If the executives didn't know who Miller's source was then hinting about Rove was merely speculation (not their job) and speaks to the paper's lack of objectivity when reporting on the Bush Administration. Not only that, because the paper was never clear about what the executives knew, a reader could assume the hints were the paper's way of leaking the truth. Again, leaking information seems to be part and parcel of journalism.
If they knew the source, and it wasn't Rove then any suggestion about Rove was not only blatantly deceitful it was libelous.
If they knew the source was Rove, then they were obligated to report that fact openly since revealing it through hints is no different than reporting it. In addition, if others at the paper knew Miller's sources, then they are not confidential anyway. If this was true, than the paper used Miller's legal wrangle with Fitzgerald to provide cover for themselves.
What readers are left with is a paper that, when covering its backside, reports information about itself in the third person because its interest is in conflict with reporting the truth.
Today it was reported by Michael Isikoff of Newsweek (he of the Koran flushing fame) that some of Miller's notes have just been found. So while the NYT fiddled with their lawyers about what to report, their competition reported the scoop first.
Journalistic ethics should have prevented the NYT from covering and reporting this story at all, but since their ethics are in the gutter, they tried to have it both ways thereby doing disservice to all who read their articles.
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