Here is the transcript of an online chat with Washington Post reported Howard Kurtz. Most of this is about Joe Wilson and the six reporters who also got the leak.
Media Backtalk
With Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 29, 2003; 12:00 PM
Kurtz talks about the press and the stories of the day in "Media Backtalk."
The transcript follows.
Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.
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Parkville, Md.: Howard,
It looks like General Wesley Clark is the new media darling of the week. Reporters talk gleefully about the newest Democratic candidate and "anti-war" general. Now, personally, I don't really recall Clark being that particularly critical of the administration's war effort when he was commenting for CNN, and a recent FAIR report confirms my suspicions:
fair.org
Clark wasn't nearly as critical of the war effort back then as he's been made out to be today. Is the press being sloppy here? Giving Clark a pass? Why isn't he being challenged more pointedly on some of his CNN statements?
Howard Kurtz: I don't recall Clark being tremendously critical either, the times that I saw him during the war. But he was certainly more critical than most of the other ex-general talking heads, who were basically Pentagon cheerleaders.
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Washington, D.C.: Ok. So in yesterday's Post, Allen/Priest wrote "The official would not name the leakers for the record and would not name the journalists."
So, this means that they know who the leakers are?
Then they follow up by stating that "Wilson, while refusing to confirm his wife's occupation, has suggested publicly that he believes Bush's senior adviser, Karl C. Rove, broke her cover."
What should we take from this? Is this a hint as to who one of the criminal leakers is?
washingtonpost.com: Bush Administration Is Focus of Inquiry (Post, Sept. 28)
Howard Kurtz: I don't know if this unnamed official knows who the leakers or the journalists are. I don't even know who the unnamed official is.
And Joe Wilson's comment is just his informed speculation on who he thinks is involved.
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McLean, Va.: Howard, I am a little confused about the story of the leak by the White House of the identity of a CIA agent. First, if this is a federal crime and Robert Novak knows who the guilty party is, would it not be responsible to report the identity of the leaker? Second, it seems a little thin for the motive of the leaker to be simple "revenge". Do you think we will be seeing further reporting about the backstory to this leak, or just stories about who this deepthroat might be and quotes from Democrats condemning Republicans?
Howard Kurtz: We will certainly see more reportage. But I don't think, based on what Novak has said so far, that he's going to turn around and name the leakers. He presumably made a pledge of confidentiality when he agreed to accept the information without attributing it to those two senior administration officials. Journalists often do this, and then find themselves bound by the pledge when the information, or motivation of the leakers, becomes controversial. We saw the same dilemma during the investigation of leaks by Ken Starr's office.
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Damascus, Md.: Who do you think were the 'at least six other journalists' who did not take the unnamed White House senior official's bait and break Valerie Plame's cover?
Were you one of them?
Howard Kurtz: I don't know who they are. I am not one of them.
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Washington, D.C.: Why did it take so long for the story about White House officials allegedly illegally exposing a CIA operative to become big news? It seems that the mainstream press is too reactive. For example, the uproar over Clinton travel office scandal was driven by the right wing talk-show chorus. If there was more of a left-wing presence on radio and TV, do you think there would have been more attention in the Post and Times? If so, what does that say about independent judgement?
Howard Kurtz: I'm frankly surprised that it took this story so long to hit the fan. All we know now that we didn't know back in July is that the CIA has asked Justice to look into the matter. Chuck Schumer certainly tried to make an issue out of it, and Joe Wilson got to air his allegation on programs like "Today" and at the National Press Club. The truth is, the press blew it on this one. The story was out there and very few picked up on it.
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Alexandria, Va.: Any thoughts on Brit Hume's interview with President Bush? You mentioned last week that you'd be surprised if he didn't ask at least a few hardhitting questions. Were you surprised?
Howard Kurtz: I thought it was a pretty good interview. It opened up rather soft, with Hume asking the president about his daily routine and getting the Oval Office tour, but Tom Brokaw did some of that too. Later in the program, Brit asked a number of good questions about Iraq and other subjects. An interesting footnote, for me, is that the Fox session with Bush finished fourth in the ratings, behind ABC, CBS and NBC.
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Washington, D.C.: Howard, how valid are these new polls regarding the California recall and Wesley Clark v. George Bush? It seems kind of suspect that barely two weeks into Clark's campaign he all of the sudden now has the momentum to beat the President without having to give his positions on a lot of different issues.
washingtonpost.com: Poll: Calif. Ready for a Recall (Post, Sept. 29)
Howard Kurtz: I have no way of knowing whether Clark will be a flash in the pan in these polls or not. I've suggested that many Democrats may be drawn to him because of his military experience and the fact that he's a blank slate -- meaning, we don't know enough about his positions on various domestic issues for him to have disappointed anyone yet. But in a larger sense, national polls (many of which have had Joe Lieberman leading) are meaningless, because the primaries are fought out state by state. Clark isn't doing nearly as well in the Iowa and New Hampshire polls, at least not yet.
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Greenbelt, Md.: I'm a little confused about the whole 'leaking' story. A reporter said that a source in the White House said Plame was a CIA operative. Why didn't Novak just deny it and move on? His non-answer plus anger confirms the claim. It would seem safer for both of them if he lied.
Howard Kurtz: Novak himself wrote in his July 14 column that the information about Valerie Plame came from two senior administration officials. He told my colleague Mike Allen over the weekend that the administration didn't make a very forceful case that she would be jeopardized if he published the information.
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Philadelphia, Pa.: Do the reporters, Andrea Mitchell and five others, who were contacted by the two "Bush senior administartion officials" have any obligations to these sources since they did not report the story about Joseph Wilson's wife? Would it be unethical for them to comment about which "Bush senior administration officials" contacted them about stories that were not reported?
Howard Kurtz: Generally speaking, reporters feel bound by a pledge of confidentiality they make to sources, whether they publish the information or not. On rare occasions, journalists will reveal a source if they conclude they have been lied to.
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Syracuse, N.Y.: In Sunday's story about the Wilson smear, the reporters (Allen and Priest, I believe) referred to a "senior administration official" who confirmed to them the Novak leak. Yet in today's edition, Allen refers to merely an "administration official" and an "aide," but no mention of the word "senior." Is this significant?
Howard Kurtz: Don't know the reason for the downgrading, since I don't know who the sources are.
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Jessup, Md.: Why is it that lower echelon reporters like Jayson Blair at the New York Times get fired for plagiarism, but at the same time syndicated columnists like Robert Novak, and by complicity Fred Hiatt, your editorial page director, can destroy a career and risk a life with impunity? I suggest that there needs to be some serious introspection at the Washington Post concerning some of its editorial positions, but particularly whether in any case sympathy with the Iraq war allowed the newspaper to become a tool for the Bush administration. If there really is equity and fairness in the journalistic field, high-brows like Novak and Hiatt should be held accountable for ethical lapses. So what will the Post do?
Howard Kurtz: Whether Bob Novak committed an ethical lapse is very much open to debate. I guess the question I'd ask is, what purpose was served by publishing the information about Wilson's wife? Novak devoted all of one paragraph to it and didn't make that much of it. As for Fred Hiatt, he himself says he wished he had asked more questions about the Novak column at the time. But editorial page editors who buy a syndicated column rarely pull it, except in the most egregious cases. And even if Hiatt had, the Novak column would have run in more than 300 other papers, including the New York Post and his home paper, the Chicago Sun-Times.
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Boston, Mass.: Today, the White House is saying that Rove did not leak to Novak. But even if he didn't, do you think that in this particular administration, any such leak would occur without Rove's knowledge and blessing?
Howard Kurtz: It's certainly possible. Karl can't know of every whispered conversation that takes place between someone in the administration and a reporter.
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Bangor, Maine: Howard -- Brokaw now says that Andrea Mitchell was called with the Wilson story. Do you think other reporters and/or their news organizations should come forward to put themselves in that group of six who were called? Wouldn't it be useful to citizens to know who got this information? As a news consumer, I want to know.
Howard Kurtz: I think it's possible for the reporters who were called to say so without revealing their confidential sources.
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Arlington, Va.: What are the chances that the current CIA-leaking scandal will blow over with little or no damage? It seems that if the two senior administration officials simply keep their mouths shut, no one will ever find out.
Howard Kurtz: As I reported this morning, leak investigations are almost never successful. Of course, if investigators start giving polygraph tests to potential suspects, things can get difficult.
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New York, N.Y.: Can you please enlighten me as to how the editorial process works when there's a leak? If a White House official did call six or more reporters regarding Valerie Plame, would the reporters have revealed the name of the leaker(s) to their editors? If so, then wouldn't the large number of people who must know the name of the source by now suggest that it will be difficult to keep it under wraps (as opposed to a case where there's a leak to only one reporter)?
Howard Kurtz: Generally speaking, a reporter probably wouldn't reveal the name of the leaker to an editor unless the reporter decided to publish the information. Then there would probably be a conversation about motivations, how solid the information was, etc. But in this case the six journalists did not publish the information.
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New York, N.Y.: When a news story reveals information from an anonymous source that it's a crime to reveal, is it ethical for a reporter to protect the source? Let's say, hypothetically, that the revelation was intended to harm a political enemy, rather than to blow the whistle on government misconduct. Let's say, hypothetically, that this source went to several journalists, some of whom had the principles not to go with the story: would it be unethical for these journalists to reveal the name of the source, if another journalist used that information and an inquiry is launched to investigate it? Do journalists who do not reveal the source run the risk of being complicit in the crime? Would it be ethical for a journalist to write a story naming the source of the criminal leak using information from an unnamed journalist who was contacted by the original source: "John Doe was responsible for the leak that endangered Robert Q. Public's wife, according to a journalist at a major national newspaper who spoke on condition of anonymity." Would that be ethical? Would an editor be in the right to publish this story if he knew the unnamed journalist was reliable?
Howard Kurtz: It's hard to come up with a one-size-fits-all standard. For example, it might be a crime for a prosecutor or a grand juror to reveal information about some huge scandal that could affect public safety or health. It is not a crime for a reporter to receive such information, and the reporter could be serving the public by getting it out. That does not always make it right for the journalist to publish information that could jeopardize, for example, a military operation or police investigation. So each situation has to be carefully weighed on its merits.
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New York, N.Y.: You say reporters might reveal a source if they conclude they'd been lied to. What if they conclude they'd been used to ruin or hurt someone who is married to a political enemy?
Howard Kurtz: That is the question. But it can't have been a secret to Bob Novak or anyone else that the Bush adminstration was mighty angry at Joe Wilson for contradicting the president's claim that Saddam's Iraq had tried to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger -- and that revealing this information about his wife would be a way of getting back at him.
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Gambrills, Md.: "But editorial page editors who buy a syndicated column rarely pull it, except in the most egregious cases."
True, but they sure are quick on the trigger when it comes to Doonesbury.
Seriously, though. This whole Wilson-gate, or yellowcake-gate, or whatever it will be called shows a problem with the media. The 16 words happened in January. The story didn't break until, when? July? Then, the leak about Wilson's wife happened in July, and the story didn't make the front page until September 28th?
Don't you all have a Club where you can go and ask introspective questions like, why aren't these BIG stories getting to A1 sooner?
Howard Kurtz: Your chronology is off. There were plenty of stories in the press, for months, questioning the validity of Bush's claim about the uranium, as more and more evidence came out. The press was very aggressive on that one. Where the media were slow was in jumping on the ramifications of two people in the administration outing the identity of a CIA operative in Novak's July 14 column.
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Los Angeles, Calif.: Howard, concerning the second question/response of this chat: I can't believe the journalist-protects-source "rule" refers to those sources who commit crimes. Is that what you're saying, that because of this journalists can keep knowledge of crimes (presumably, including murder) to themselves?
Howard Kurtz: I hate to sound like Bill Clinton, but it depends on the meaning of the word crime. What if the FBI agent who tried to blow the whistle on suspicious airplane activities of the 9/11 hijackers had given that information to a reporter? It might have been a crime for him to leak information from a confidential investigation, but it might have helped avert a tragedy. Here, however, I have a harder time understanding the news value of revealing Valerie Plame's CIA connection.
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Rockville, Md.: Howard,
Your statement above has a fatal flaw. One reporter did publish the information (Novak); so therefore he must have told his editor about it before publishing it. The editor must have approved it before it was published and known that it was wrong to blow someone's cover, hence endangering her life. No matter how this gets spinned in Rove's favor, it is clear that only a high level official would know the identity of CIA operatives.
Howard Kurtz: As a syndicated columnist, Novak works for himself and therefore doesn't have an editor.
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Alexandria, Va.: Hi Howard,
The Plame scandal brings up an interesting question of how far journalists can go to protect their sources. In this case, the only way to weed out a dangerous leaker who is imperiling national security and probably belongs in jail, may be for Novak, Mitchell, et al to squeal. Is there ANY limit to how far a journalist can go to protect sources?
Howard Kurtz: Sure. But it's up to the journalists involved to decide whether what happened was so egregious that it justifies their breaking their pledge of confidentiality.
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Plano, Tex.: Howard, it seemed that Condoleezza Rice was extremely uncomfortable Sunday morning on "Fox News Sunday." Is it possible that she knows more about the intelligence leak probe than she was letting on? Does Robert Novak have to worry about Federal charges?
Howard Kurtz: I have no idea what Condi knew or didn't know, but she was clearly on the defensive because it's an uncomfortable situation for the White House. As for Novak, he's in no legal jeopardy because it's not a crime to receive such information. The crime, potentially, is that government officials who had access to national security information -- namely, the identity of a CIA operative -- chose to make that information public.
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Bastrop, La.: A couple question on the Plame Affair. If say Mark Shields had revealed the name of a CIA operative do you think Mr. Novak would not be at least writing about it in his column about how this jeopardizes our intelligence community? I am amazed that this issue has not been raised by his colleagues on the Capital Gang. My next question maybe naive but I am curious why the President does not call in this people and put the question to them. Did you or did you not spill the beans to Mr. Novak. Why do you think he will not do that. Lastly what did you think of the Presidents admission that he rarely reads more than headlines and relies upon his staff to tell him what is in the news (I know that is what a lot of leaders do but still only reading the headlines was a shocker to me).
Howard Kurtz: 1) I suppose it would depend on the circumstances as to whether Novak would criticize Shields in such a situation. 2) Presidents never get involved in such investigations, and potentially could be accused of interfering with the Justice probe. 3) I'm always mystified when presidents don't read the papers, but Clinton more or less did the same thing, relying on his staff and on the daily White House news summary that is distributed throughout the West Wing.
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Los Angeles, Calif.: What is your opinion of the coverage of Schwarzenegger in the recall campaign? To me it seems he is unfairly being given all sorts of airtime candidates who are tied or have been above him, like Bustamante and even Davis, haven't been given. Isn't this unfair and unprofessional?
Howard Kurtz: The press has been going gaga over Arnold since the day he got in the race. He's received far, far more coverage than the other candidates -- profiles, pieces about his bodybuilding days, his attitudes toward women, even arguments about his real height. Is this fair? Not really. But Schwarzenegger is a celebrity candidate whose movie star fame brings him a whole different level of coverage -- and enables him to largely blow off reporters in favor of appearances on Oprah, Howard Stern, etc.
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Washington, D.C.: I am confused about the newsorthiness of the identity of Wilson's wife. How does Wilson's wife being an undercover agent in any way affect Wilson's credibility? The leaker supposedly pushed the story on a number of journalists (only one of whom bit) that the "real" story was not Wilson challenging the White House on the yellow-cake claim, but his wife's identity. What is the story there? I find the fact that his wife is (was) an undercover agent dealing with WMD makes Wilson more credible, not less. So if the information doesn't go to Wilson's credibility, it could only have been intended to intimidate, right? How would a White House staffer "sell" Wilson's wife's identity as newsworthy? I don't get it.
Howard Kurtz: Not sure I completely get it either, other than the notion that Valerie Plame suggested that her husband make his fact-finding trip to Niger. It seems much more a way of getting back at a prominent White House critic.
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Frederick, Md.: Speaking of California, is the media in your estimation braced for the likely 11th hour slime broadside against Arnold? Democrats are notorious for this tactic (e.g. see Bush/Gore 2000 with the last minute airing of a 20 year old drunk driving charge, the two Barbara Boxer Senate races against both her opponents. and of course Gray Davis in every campaign he runs, whether his opponent is a another Democrat in a primary or a Republican in the general election). And do you think the media see the pattern and report the trend if this happens?
Howard Kurtz: I don't accept the premise that Democrats generally are famous for last-minute dirty tricks, and sometimes these allegations come from a single disgruntled person (like the guy who got Bush's DUI record). But if there is any kind of Arnold smear, the press will be all over it, given that the recall is receiving presidential campaign-level coverage.
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Philadelphia, Pa.: Are syndicated columnists above the fray? Do they have to answer to anyone? Are their stories left completely unedited or corroborated? If this is true, don't syndicated columnists have as much credibility as say the big bad internet does? Who right-wingers claim have no credibility becuase there are no editors or oversight on the Internet? Isn't Bill O'Reilly a syndicated columnist?
Howard Kurtz: I guess the short answer is that syndicated columnists answer directly only to their syndicates, although editorial page editors are certainly free to call the columnist and question something he or she has written, or not run it at all. Ultimately, columnists have to rely on their repuation for credibility, and if that reputation gets eroded, they may start losing client papers.
Thanks for the chat, folks.
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