Howie Kurtz not drinking Kool-Aid today? " From Mark Felt to Karl Rove"

[DeepModem Mom]

From Mark Felt to Karl Rove
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 18, 2005

Thirty-three years after Bob Woodward first met Mark Felt in an Arlington parking garage, echoes of the Watergate era seem to be everywhere.

But the comparisons for the press are not all that flattering.

Liberal critics of the media, who believe journalists abysmally failed to challenge the president's WMD claims during the Iraq war buildup, feel vindicated by news that two reporters were granting Karl Rove anonymity as he tried to undermine a prominent debunker of those claims, Joe Wilson, by mentioning his wife's CIA role. Some even fault Judith Miller for her act of conscience in going to jail, saying the New York Times reporter is merely protecting Rove (though no one knows whether her source was the White House political adviser or someone else).

For those who see the secretive Bush administration as a reincarnation of the Nixon regime, the disclosure that Rove served as a source for Time's Matt Cooper and columnist Robert Novak looks like the slow unraveling of a scandal that has now reached the top level of the White House. Scott McClellan is cast in the Ron Ziegler role, refusing to answer a barrage of reporters' questions about Rove after his previous answers were rendered inoperative.

Even the media's preferred narrative -- built around the sanctity of anonymous sources -- comes up short. Unlike Deep Throat, who was risking his FBI career by telling Woodward about the Nixon spying operation and cover-upRove and whoever else leaked Valerie Plame's CIA connection to Novak and other journalists were doing partisan dirty work, and some may have been committing a crime. Cooper and others have argued that they can't make a distinction between "good guy" and "bad guy" sources -- a promise is a promise -- but helping White House officials finger a covert operative is not exactly the kind of work that builds public support for the Fourth Estate....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100587.html

[LeftNYC]

1. Will the real Howie Kurtz please stand up? n/t.

[blondeatlast]

4. Oh, it's the real Howie the K, all right--note this:

"Liberal critics of the media..."

How about critics in general, Howie?

And this:
"This is a tangled tale in which no one looks good. And that goes double for Novak, the syndicated columnist and CNN commentator who disclosed Plame's CIA connection in July 2003, based on "two senior administration officials.""

Freedom of the press and the responsibility it ensues to democracy is NOT a partisan issue, nor should it be.

Shit doesn't change it's stink, and Howie is always Howie, grasping at the thinnest threads to save his ass from his masters.

[Celebration]

2. Just following the crowd!

He would never take the lead on this. He is out for Howie.

[TahitiNut]

3. "Some even fault Judith Miller for her act of conscience in going to jail"

Are people also "faulting Karl Rove for his act of conscience in exposing Valerie Plame"??

To characterize Judith Miller's incarceration as factually stemming from some fictitious "act of conscience" is pretentious and posturing propaganda. Judith Miller's refusal to testify is the moral equivalent of using hostage children as human shields. The media's self-serving claim to some legal privilege in this case is Orwellian - "all the animals are equal but some are more equal than others."

To claim some privilege (exemption from public laws with which others must comply) that's rationalized as protective of whistle-blowers in a case of retaliation against a whistle-blower, violating national security and exposing US intelligence 'assets' to assassination, is the most wretched extreme of moral hypocrisy imaginable.

I regard Miller as a lower life form than even Novak. She has shown herself to be the worst of media whores - a pus-filled tumor in the crotch of the press.