Michael Wolff has a fabulous piece in the September issue of Vanity Fair called All Roads Lead to Rove. It’s not available online, but I have transcribed my favorite sections (all errors are mine).
Wolff starts out talking about the breaking news that Rove was one of Cooper’s sources:
The sheer fabulousness of it seemed to give eveybody pause. News professionals often have to be hit over the head relentlessly with one of the biggest stories of their careers to understand it’s actually one of the biggest stories of their careers. Nobody believed that the president’s right-hand man, his brain, his Haldeman and Ehrlichman rolled into one, his id and superego, would leave his fingerprints…everywhere.
Yes. Yes. Yes. It was we fair bloggers that did the relentless head beating…never forget.
:::flip:::
It isn’t, obviously, that everybody didn’t pretty much assume Rove had a hand here- but everybody was hip enough to know that you wouldn’t ever, ever in a million years, tie him to it. Not Karl.
I never made that assumption. But I guess the big-foot media did.
So a day passed, then two, then three, then four- this was a story that, in full view, the media just ignored- before it started to dawn on everyone that the president’s president might be cooked. Indeed, that the president was probably going to have to fire his brain’s ass, or stonewall long and hard. That the curse of the second term had struck- yes, say it, the Bush presidency was now in Watergate/Iran-Contra/Lewinsky territory.
I love the line about Bush having to fire his brain’s ass. Pure comedy. But seriously, how could it take anytime at all to dawn on the media…
Except the schizy thing was that the media knew it all along-
Time magazine knew it, likely
The New York Times did, as well as the columnist Robert Novak.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but what they knew was something of such news value, of such moment, of such certain consequence that it might, reasonably, have presaged the defeat of the president, might have even- to be only slightly melodramatic- altered the course of the war in Iraq. So possibly changed history, saved lives…hmmm.
And that’s the point. Protecting a source is one of the most important things a reporter must do. But there is no reason to be an accomplice to a crime, especially a crime that, if exposed, could change the result of a presidential election.
Not only did highly placed members of the media and the vaunted news organizations they worked for know it, not only did they sit on what will not improbably be among the biggest stories of the Bush years, they helped cover it up. You could even plausibly say that these organizations became part of a conspiracy– they entered into an understanding that, as a quid pro quo for certain information, they would refuse to provide evidence about a crime possibly having been committed by the president’s closest confidant.
They could have saved this country and the world a lot of heartache if they would have stopped and looked at the bigger picture. But they didn’t.
As soon as it becomes clear that an event has occurred that, if exposed, might change the course of the government, one which you, the gallant news organization, have got the skinny on (not least because your own employees have been involved in the deal), you print the story.
Bingo. This is a criminal investigation of enormous proportions. Telling the public the truth about it doesn’t set a precedent for squealing on whistleblowers.
So, why didn’t anyone volunteer the information on Rove (and the other culprits)? Wolff nails it:
They all seemed to have just thought that a source is a source. And a source is a source who, unrevealed, will continue to be a source. And if the biggest source in town is my source, that makes me the biggest-swinging-dick reporter in town. And, ipso facto, if my source is outed and goes to jail, then I’m no longer the reporter with the biggest source and dick in town. But if I protect my source, as I’ve sworn to do, he’ll owe me big, and I’ll have an even bigger dick.
LMAO.
Wow! Thank youi, Boo! My daughter gets the magazine and has it, the stinker … besides the Sibel Edmonds article, that’s the other one I want to read….
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Thank youi, Boo!
~~~
NOT! I cancelled my subscription after the Hilary Clinton article which was full of lies. I don’t even like Hilary that much, but I do admire her stalwart ‘stand by my man’ throughout those painful Clinton years. She is too much of a hawk for my liking. Nevertheless I sent Vanity Fair a note on her behalf.
“And that’s the point. Protecting a source is one of the most important things a reporter must do. But there is no reason to be an accomplice to a crime, especially a crime that, if exposed, could change the result of a presidential election.”
And the course of history. Imagine how different things would be right now. This being reported promptly may have saved thousands of lives. But no, Rove saved Rove’s ass and the media is complicit.
Thanks, BooMan! That article was so great, I was hoping someone would blog it. I ended up reading half of it out loud over the phone to a friend of mine. Thanks for transcribing it.
This month’s issue also has a good article about Marine Recuiters. It’s a real shame their stuff isn’t online.
Check out your local library, mine offers online access to patrons.
Look at Judth Miller, a dickless reporter with a source.
What about her, eh?
(just kidding around, it’s Friday after all)
I find this diary very relaxing to me. I love what this has to say to us all. Thanks for sending this our way. My question is whatis there left to say about rove….nothing in my opinion. he is a bag full of shit and he stinks to high heaven and always has.
That was a freakin’ hilarious article…
Sad but true commentary on this admin. and it’s ties to the Corporate Media…
But still freakin’ hilarious.
<s>Liberal</s> <s>Conservative</s> <s>Corporate</s> Corrupt Media.
Thank you Booman. You and Michael Wolff have helped explain one of the many routine failures of journalism.
Let me respond to a few points.
how could it take anytime at all to dawn on the media…
This is a give-away to the nature of journalism as a career. Journalists write to please a specific mass audience, where the rest of us write to please ourselves and maybe show off. The delay career journalists have displayed is in recognizing that their audience will actually strongly want to know about the event. It is that feed-back from the audience that journalists are looking for before they commit a significant part of their career to following such an event.
Being too strong into the early parts of an anticipated media frenzy that fizzles damages a journalists reputation as a source of reliable information.
Journalists write to sell information to the broadest audience for the specific purpose of selling advertising. Making money is secondary to publishing the story of the downfall of a President. You really don’t want to dive in too soon to a story that fizzles.
not only did they sit on what will not improbably be among the biggest stories of the Bush years, they helped cover it up.
Most people in careers have routine methods of performing what they do. Among journalists, many have a career advantage by protecting the productive sources they have developed through hard work over time. If they lose those sources, their jobs are damaged in a lot of ways. The routine method of handling stories that would damage those sources is to protect the sources, thus binding them more closely to the journalist. That is long-term thinking from the point of view of the career journalist.
It also binds the journalist to the source, so that it takes a while for it to dawn that the story itself is so important that the loss of the source is comparatively unimportant. A second point is that awareness of the overall impact of the story takes a while to sink in. Most stories are just routine words written to fill the daily news hole. By the time it becomes clear that a story is more than that, the journalist himself is locked into the protective actions he has previously taken for his source. It will take time and a real shock to make such a career journalist begin to react differently to even the largest of stories. But that isn’t the only cause of delay.
Once the journalist himself decides to change and cover the story rather than protect his sources, he then has to convince his editors. Editors will be people who have experience in the career of journalism, but are now removed from direct contact with the breaking news being covered. The journalistic routine will be a lot more important than the impact of the facts they are covering. Editors and managers, being removed from direct contact with the story will always be much slower to break from the routine ways of reporting. That’s one reason I think Ben Bradley is the real hero of the WaPo Watergate story.
Michael Wolff really has it pegged. The problem is journalistic careerism, in which the personal advantage of the journalist and the institution he writes for is invariably more important than the impact of the story on society.
Since most of us in the Blogosphere write for pleasure and information rather than for a paycheck, the motivations of the careerist journalists seems very strange to us.