Navel-gazing on Plame

The American Journalism Review takes a whack at explaining the overwhelming chorus of crickets from the Big Media on the recent Plame revelations:

There are many ways to characterize the media's response to the news that former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was responsible for outing CIA operative Valerie Plame. "Feeding frenzy" isn't one of them.

"Collective yawn" is more like it.

A classic understatement if there ever was one. But we must press on...

After all the blanket coverage of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation, after all the speculation about Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, after all the allegations of dastardly doings by the Bush White House, you'd think IDing the leaker would be big news.

That's particularly true when it turns out the villain wasn't an angry neocon bent on revenge against a critic of the Iraq war – Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson – but a Colin Powell ally who was at best a lukewarm supporter of the invasion.

Far from being part of an orchestrated plot or a vast White House conspiracy, Plame's unmasking was simply the handiwork of that Washington, D.C., staple, an insider with a big mouth. The culprit was gossip, not political gunslinging.

The irony is killing me...

The big national papers were all over the Plame story for months. But after Armitage's attorney weighed in, the New York Times played the story inside on page 12 (it ultimately ran an Armitage piece out front on September 2), and USA Today ran a brief. As of mid-September, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, like many other newspapers, still hadn't given the story page-one treatment.

Back in the day, when Wilson was demanding that Karl Rove be frog-marched out of the White House, Plame was a cable extravaganza. But the denouement never came close to receiving equal time, let alone a place in the JonBenet/Missing White Women pantheon.

Bob Woodward held forth on CNN's "Larry King Live" at the height of Plame frenzy, belittling Fitzgerald's investigation (Woodward was later embarrassed when it came out that he had his own inside knowledge about Plame but had not disclosed it). But King convened no panels on Armitage.

In a column agreeing with readers that his paper had underplayed Armitage and that the story belonged out front, Kansas City Star Readers' Representative Derek Donovan put it well: "Questioning – even suspicion – of those in power is a dearly-held American tradition, and many critical eyes have long, and I think rightly, focused on Rove's political influence at the White House.

"But that's not the issue here. From a simple standpoint of reporting news equitably, I think the Armitage revelation merited more prominent play." So why the lame response? The easy answer, and a popular one on the right, is that much-ballyhooed liberal bias of the media. And there's no doubt an episode like this gives great ammunition to those who see the press as a bunch of card-carrying, fire-breathing lefties.

But I'm not buying it. Is that the same bunch of pinkos who were so cowed after 9/11, so credulous in their coverage of WMD? The same ones who brought us the Monica Lewinsky circus? (OK, lying about sex under oath is bad, but worse than leading a nation into an optional war with a dubious rationale, far too few troops and no plans for what to do after the fighting stops?) Or, speaking of long-running, high-profile "scandals" about not so much, the ones who wallowed in Whitewater?

Maybe it's simply a matter of embarrassment. After so much breathless coverage of supposed White House character assassination, maybe the MSM just kind of hoped the whole thing would go away.

Whatever the reason, it was a curious and disappointing performance.

We round out with book-end understatements. Meanwhile, I must continue to laugh at the licks David Corn is taking:

I think Corn believed that his personal role in helping launch this entire beltway soap opera was gonna' raise him to the iconic status of a Woodward and Bernstein. And why not? A gaga-eyed MSM was just swallowing the script whole. The self-righteous drivel of that dreamily coifed, bunko yellowcake debunker. The "Behesting" Dick Cheney and his villainous cabal of frogmarching co-conspirator's, hell bent on revenge. The cheesecake photo-shoots of the fetching (and privacy loving) Agent Valerie, so wrongfully revealed in all her tender vanity as the Who's Who of Foggy Bottom victimettes. And to top it all off, a baseball talking Inspector Javert, whose sense of Justice is dwarfed only by his stench of Injustice. Shakespeare would kill for such a cast of Shylock's and Desdemona's. Toss in a couple numbers from Leonard Bernstein and this thing'd be on Broadway till our grandkids are speaking Arabic.

And to think, that Corn's dream of becoming Woodward got shot down by none other than Woodward himself. Betch'a Bernstein would'a kept his mouth shut. Damn the bad luck. Ah well Dave, that's Hubris.

As I said, he earned it...