I read this LA Times story with the same disgust. For the same reasons.
The Markup
A Story Blown, A Newspaper Exposed
08/25 03:27 PM
I'm getting tons of e-mail about this story, in which two LA Times reporters who apparently have nothing better to do stuck the Plame affair in the microwave and nuked it for about 5,000 words. Chris H. writes:
Yahoo news and the LA Times are taking advantage of this slow news day to remind us of the Plame affair just in case we forgot. Is there any other reason to publish this total rehash of everything we already know? And the title is "A CIA Cover Blown, a White House Exposed." The White House was exposed? Was it?
Of course not. Rather, the media was exposed for granting political operatives unconditional anonymity to snipe at each other at the expense of the public both claim to represent. But it's not about that, oh no, it's about how Karl Rove and Bob Novak conspired to endanger National Security and drive down Joseph Wilson's speaking fees.
Scott A. writes:
The story offers zero new information, and contributes plenty of wrong information in its "historical" rundown of the "facts" surrounding the issue.
Of course. The reason for running this story, as if it weren't obvious already, is illuminated by passages like these:
What motivated President Bush's political strategist, Karl Rove; Vice President Cheney's top aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby; and others to counter Wilson so aggressively? How did their roles remain secret until after the president was reelected? Have they fully cooperated with the investigation?
The answers remain elusive.
No, they don't. Wilson was lying. Rove and Libby and others did their jobs, which is to tell the White House's side of the story. I wish they hadn't done so anonymously, but then again Joseph Wilson was spreading his lies anonymously too, before his ego got the better of him and he pompously told his tale of yellowcake and sweet mint tea on the op-ed pages of the NY Times. How did their roles remain secret? Ask Judith Miller. Have they fully co-operated with the investigation? Rove has testified three times. Miller has testified zero times. How are these answers, which have been obvious for months, eluding these reporters?
The answer is that these reporters aren't interested in the answers. They are interested in getting this story back into the news. The hard fact is that few people cared about this story when it was all over the news in July, and even fewer care about it now. In fact, I'm mad that I just spent 15 minutes writing about it, when I could've been watching The Situation Room
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