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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ish who wrote (11066)	10/6/2003 7:03:20 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793804

I am sure he is a fine fellow. But that story falls outside the limits of my belief system. :>) I wonder why "The Public's right to know" stops at the newsroom door? ______________________________________ 35 AM ET A FIRESTORM OVER JOURNALISTIC SECRECY? Last week, I noted that where the Wilson scandal is concerned, [T}his is all about leaks to reporters, remember . . . quite a few reporters do know what happened, but aren’t talking, because they don’t want to give up their sources — who are, presumably, the leaker or leakers. So as the press runs around in a frenzy about the need to get to the bottom of a major national security story, the press, in fact, already knows the answer, but won’t tell. Other people have caught onto this. Writing in the Washington Post, Howard Kurtz observes: There are at least six people in Washington who know the answer to the city’s most politically charged mystery in years. And they’re not talking. That’s because they’re journalists. . . . Some members of the public, if a torrent of e-mails is any indication, suggest Novak and the other journalists have a duty to come forward. If it is a federal crime for officials to intentionally make public the name of a covert operative, these critics ask, why do reporters who serve as a conduit for such information get a pass? As I said in my previous post on this subject, I think that members of the public will be asking that question, with growing intensity, if this scandal remains in the news. MORE ON IRAQ AND THE MEDIA Writing in the National Journal, Jonathan Rauch joins those noticing the discrepancy between media accounts of what’s going on in Iraq and what people who have been there say: Consistently, however, observers — including some I know personally and trust — return from Iraq reporting that the picture up close is better than the images in the media. Michael O’Hanlon, a Brookings Institution military analyst who is no pushover for the Bush administration, recently came back saying that the quality of the work being done in Iraq by American forces is “stunning.” Another federal judge has weighed in on Iraq, too. Judge Gilbert Merritt, a Carter appointee on the U.S. Court of Appeals whom I clerked for after law school, visited Iraq on the same judicial-assistance mission as Judge Donald Walter, whose report I mentioned earlier, and offers a similar take: Still, Merritt is optimistic. From his time in Iraq, he has come to believe that the overwhelming majority of people there support the reconstruction. . . . An early opponent of the U.S. invasion, Merritt now says he saw a different dimension of Iraq while there and believes the United States was right to lead the coalition’s campaign to oust Saddam. Silence on the leaker. Reports on Iraq contradicted by military analysts, federal judges, touring musicians, Democratic congressmen, and returning troops. Now that we know they’re not telling us the whole story at home, or abroad, don’t you think it’s time for folks in the news business to rethink their priorities and performance? If any other industry were performing this poorly, the press would be running one expose after another. msnbc.com