Cahoots

One of the levers that the Junta has used to impose their alien will on Americans over the past five years has been a dominance of the media. At first, Big Media was used like a box of Kleenex at a peep show (eww - forget you read that). They were not prepared to deal with a federal government that lied to them about crucial life and death issues. They were used to governments that told the truth - even when that truth was embarrassing to them.

When the Junta stole the 2000 election, they had no such standards. Not only would they hide embarrassing truths, they would hide their intentions and actions by the use of active falsehoods and base obfuscation. Requests for any information that would be politically uncomfortable was stonewalled. The only straight answers offered were straight up lies.

Wolf Blitzer and the rest went along with it. They had no experience in fact-checking the White House. Sure, Press Secretaries mess with you and dance around, but they don't tell straight-up lies about crucial matters of state. But, oh, yes they do.

And when the press is that badly confused and professionally incurious, the people they report to are as well. After all, when the president says there's proof of nukuler weapons, who's to argue? Certainly nobody reading the paper over the morning coffee. That's been the job of the media, and they've failed.

The Junta has them talking spin. When there's a story to be told, Junta operatives make it crystal clear that truth-tellers will be punished. Johnny Go-Along gets straight scoops from the powers. Sure, the 'scoops' might be pure drivel, but it's what they're saying at the White House. As a reporter, that's gold.

So the American people have had their heads turned by a media operation that was glad to turn itself into the propaganda arm of the Junta. So much so that Judy Miller of the NYT allowed herself to become part of the story. Good reporting became defined as 'telling the party storyline.'

It seems nobody outside of Knight-Ridder was immune. Not even the guy who broke up the Nixon Junta.

Bob Woodward was in on the Plame identity a month before Scooter squealed. He just told Pat Fitz - on Nov. 3 - and still refuses to report who told him and what they said.

Bob Woodward is no longer a journalist. A journalist reports to the people. A journalist keeps important sources secret to further the gathering of information to report. Gathering and squelching incriminating information is not supposed to be their job. And it certainly doesn't merit our protection under the law.

For not reporting to the prosecutor until now, Woodward should go to jail. He can't claim a not-yet-legally-defensible journalistic privilege because he never reported.

Should the mere fact of employment as a journalist shield someone? Woodward had two duties, and he failed them both.

First, as a journalist he had a duty to the people to report what he knew, to the extent that it was legal (eg not reporting the name of a covert CIA operative). Short of being the one to improperly 'out' Plame, once the leak investigation itself became news, Woodward needed to bring out his role in it.

Second, as a citizen he had the obligation to report a crime he'd been witness to. Once he knew that the revelation from his source (likely Karl Rove) was possibly a federal crime, he needed to come forward.

In his zeal to be a presidential insider, Woodward has lost his way as a news professional and as an American.