Libby, Bush and the Lapdog Press

Libby, Bush and the lapdog press

By Eric Boehlert

Created Jul 11 2007 - 9:06am

The Scooter Libby leak investigation has shamed the Beltway press corps for

four years running. From the moment in July 2003 when syndicated columnist

Robert Novak recklessly [1] printed the name of CIA covert agent Valerie

Plame, to Judith Miller's jail time [2], to Bob Woodward's playing dumb [2],

to Tim Russert's forced [3] courtroom testimony, the media elite managed to

embarrass themselves at nearly every turn, often revealing themselves as

lapdogs, not watchdogs.

So it was fitting that in covering the final chapter of the Libby saga, the

press, as if on cue, badly bungled the commutation story last week by often

downplaying its significance, reading off White House talking points, and

leaving gaping holes of context for news consumers trying to make sense of

Bush's audacious power grab.

The media's performance simply highlighted scores of unflattering newsroom

deficiencies that have become calcified during the Bush years.

For instance, on July 4, The New York Times tried to shed some light on how

Bush came to the decision to wave off a convicted felon's jail time. The

news article was headlined [4] "Bush Is Said to Have Held Long Debate on

Decision," and in it readers learned that a deliberative Bush had "delved

deeply into the evidence" of the Libby trial, consulted with aides, and

oversaw "almost clinical" dissection "with a detailed focus on the facts of

the case" that had stretched out over several weeks. How did the Times

reporters know that Bush had done his due diligence? Because anonymous Bush

aides and Republican sources told them so.

Let's put a very fine point on this: The New York Times has no idea how Bush

came to his decision to commute Libby's sentence. None. The decision was

arguably the most momentous political verdict of Bush's second term and

Times reporters were absolutely clueless -- lacking a single independent

source -- as to how Bush came to it, and what went into the White House

deliberations.

Their only insight was provided by obviously partisan aides who painted for

the Times

a portrait of a serious and thoughtful Bush pouring over his legal options,

which the Times gladly printed as fact. (Read Newsweek's similarly lame [5],

anonymous-only, "behind the scenes" account, featuring a deeply "conflicted"

Bush.)

Think about it. More than 70 months after Bush took office, Beltway

reporters are still clinging to anonymous Bush aides for the most basic

information and granting them anonymity in exchange for providing so-called

inside (i.e., fawning) details. This is the box the press corps finds itself

trapped in after allowing the Bush White House to re-write the news media

rules when the administration first set up shop in 2001. That's when Bush

essentially walked away from press conferences, his staff short-circuited

traditional back-channel communications with the media, and his senior

advisers made it known that they viewed the press corps as just another

special interest looking for access.

In other words, Bush stiff-armed the press, and the press rolled over [6].

So much so that by 2007, when a big White House story broke, reporters had

no choice but to allow Bush aides to narrate the story without interruption,

just as the White House had hoped.

Of course, the Times and Newsweek were not alone in playing the role of

court stenographer. Journalists all across the Beltway couldn't even find

out whether Vice President Dick Cheney had weighed in on the Libby topic,

let along whether he'd urged Bush to free Cheney's former chief of staff.

In fact, one moment of unintentional humor last week came during a White

House press briefing [7] given by Tony Snow. When asked about what role

Cheney played, Snow pleaded ignorance: "I have no idea, and I'm -- you'll

have to ask the vice president's office."

The dark comedy revolved around the fact that for all practical purposes the

vice president's press office stopped returning reporters' phone calls -- or

at least stopped giving serious answers to substantive questions -- sometime

around 2005. The truth is there has ceased to be a continuous flow of useful

information between Cheney's office and the press. Indeed, reporters for the

first time in modern history often cannot even find out where the vice

president is physically located on a day-to-day basis. Why does Cheney's

office function that way? Because it can. Because the press corps has

allowed Cheney's office to disappear into the ether, behind an unprecedented

cloak of secrecy.

So much so that by 2007, when a big White House story broke, reporters could

not even get the simplest questions answered about the vice president's role

in it.

Valerie Plame was not covert, right?

Another recurring newsroom ailment on display last week was journalists

allowing conservatives to spread purposeful misinformation. We heard that

during NPR's Talk of the Nation on July 3 [8], which featured as a guest

Stephen Moore, an editorial writer for The Wall Street Journal, which has

defended Libby's role in the Plame saga for years, often by misstating the

facts. Sure enough, on Talk of the Nation Moore made up central facts about

the Plame investigation. And sure enough, the NPR host did nothing to

challenge Moore when he made up facts about the Plame investigation.

Specifically, Moore announced Plame "was not a covert agent" at the CIA, and

that "under the statute of that law, she was not a covert agent." (WSJ

columnist James Taranto went on CNN last week and spread [8] the same tale.)

The fact remains that Plame testified under oath before Congress that she

was covert, the CIA first asked for a leak investigation because it

considered Plame to be covert, and in a court filing in May [9], Fitzgerald

spelled out why Plame qualified as a covert agent at the time of the

administration's 2003 leak, writing that the CIA "declassified and now

publicly acknowledges the previously classified fact that Ms. Wilson was a

CIA employee from 1 January 2002 forward and the previously classified fact

that she was a covert CIA employee during this period." Moreover, according

to House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Rep. Henry

Waxman (D-CA), CIA director Michael Hayden approved a statement given by

Waxman at the hearing in which Plame testified, saying, as The Washington

Post reported [10], that "Plame worked in a covert capacity at the time of

Novak's column and that her employment status was classified under an

executive order."

Yet, incredibly, that discredited claim about Plame's status remains the

linchpin for the conservative argument for why Libby should go free -- no

real crime was committed. Libby apologists are able to repeat their invented

claim about Plame's status because so few journalists question it, which is

why -- to close the loop -- it remains the linchpin to their argument.

Indeed, as the Daily Howler noted [11], on Talk of the Nation, it was

listeners calling in -- everyday citizens -- who were forced to do what NPR

journalists would not: point out that the claim made by Moore has been

rebutted by the CIA.

Elsewhere, media elites seemed to shrug their shoulders over the Libby

story. On CNN, host Anderson Cooper framed the story as just more partisan

sniping: "No matter what the Democrats do on the Hill, Scooter Libby won't

go to jail. Much of this is political theater. Some might even say 'politics

as usual.' " Just days after the Libby story broke, readers visiting

Newsweek or Time online had to scrounge around the websites in order to find

the Libby-related coverage.

For the Beltway press, the Libby commutation was, at best, a three-day

story. Yet try to imagine if, in 1995, President Clinton had stepped in and

tossed out the 21-month jail sentence for Webster Hubbell, his senior aide

and minor Whitewater player who was convicted of tax evasion. Would the

press have treated that as a two- or three-day story?

Perhaps nowhere last week was that collective shoulder-shrugging more

apparent than on the nightly network newscasts. NBC's Nightly News aired

just three reports on the Libby story -- one on July 2, one on July 3, and a

very brief 30-second update on July 5. Not one NBC story quoted a Democrat

on-camera reacting to the Bush commutation. The same with ABC's World

News -- just three Libby reports last week, none quoted a Democrat on

camera. CBS's Evening News also produced three stories and quoted just one

Democrat.

Back in the winter of 2001, when President Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich

became controversial, those same ABC, CBS, and NBC network evening news

programs aired more than 80 reports on that story.

Also, note that none of those nine network news reports about Libby last

week ever addressed the fact that Bush ignored Department of Justice

guidelines in making his Libby decision. (For instance, candidates receiving

commutation are supposed to have served some jail time; Libby served none.)

The network reports also failed to note that Bush had ignored protocol by

not consulting with anyone at the Department of Justice about the Libby

case.

Meanwhile, all of the Nightly News and Evening News reports failed to report

that polls indicated a vast majority of Americans opposed the idea of Bush

shortening Libby's prison sentence.

Indeed, there appeared to something of a boycott among journalists covering

the Libby story, a concerted effort to ban any reference to polling data

that could give news consumers some context about the Bush's decision as

well as the public's response. Based on the polling information, the

commutation was, in the very real sense, radically unpopular. Indeed, it was

an extreme act. But the press consistently looked away, maintaining one of

its cardinal rules of reporting for this administration: Never portray the

Bush White House as radical.

Note that Libby polling data from the spring was both readily available [12]

and overwhelming [13] in its findings; a bipartisan majority of Americans

wanted Libby to serve jail time and were opposed to any effort by Bush to

alter Libby's sentence.

More recently, a June Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll [14] found that only 20

percent of the public favored pardoning Libby. And last week, a SurveyUSA

poll [15] taken immediately following Bush's announcement found that a

strong majority, including an amazing 40 percent of self-identified

Republicans, wanted Libby to serve his full prison term.

Searching the Libby coverage last week among the country's major

metropolitan newspapers, I could only find three -- The Washington Post, The

Baltimore Sun, and The Dallas Morning News -- that even made passing

reference to polling results that helped put Bush's action in context. I

could not find any newspaper that dwelt on the fact that Bush's

controversial reprieve was so clearly at odds with mainstream public

opinion.

In fact, on July 3, a Washington Post article reported [16] that "there is

"comfort" at the White House that the decision will not hurt [bush]

politically despite the Democratic outcry." That Post article failed to

mention any polling data that would have raised serious doubts about the

"comfort" claim. The same article referenced the "avalanche of criticism"

the Bush decision had ignited, yet did not quote a single Democrat. It did

however, quote four Republicans.

Writing in the July 6 Washington Post, columnist E.J. Dionne, cutting

through the Beltway clutter, expressed [17] his outrage and wondered if

others felt the same way. "We spent months talking about Clinton's pardon of

the fugitive financier Marc Rich. This [Libby] commutation is an even

greater outrage because it involves the administration taking steps to slip

accountability for its own actions," Dionne wrote. "Are we just going to let

this one go by?"

Sorry, E.J., but the press already has.

_______

About author A senior fellow at Media Matters for America, and a former

senior writer for Salon, Boehlert's first book, "Lapdogs: How The Press

Rolled Over for Bush," was published in May. He can be reached at

eboehlert@aol.com [18]

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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their

spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their

government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are

suffering deeply in spirit,

and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public

debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have

patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning

back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at

stake."

-Thomas Jefferson