ew –

I didn’t see novak’s â€super session†but I did watch another panel at this same meeting that included Wendell Goler (faux noise), Richard Wolffe (Newsweek), Deb Riechmann (AP), Peter Maer (CBS), and Ken Herman (Cox) moderated by Susan Page (USA Today). Truth to tell based on their comments, I wouldn’t trust *any* of the above to uphold an SPJ code of ethics.

The best part of a pretty miserable performance was the last question from an audience member…..a woman who identified herself as being from St. Louis (tho’ I didn’t catch her employer). She saId (and this is pretty much a verbatium quote), â€In the dark middle of the country you are not loved.†I thought, â€Oh, spit, here goes another of those ’liberal’ media rants†but turned out I was totally mistaken. In the very most polite way possible, she went on to add, â€You are *not* doing your jobs. You’re afraid of losing your access; you’re soft.†It was also most instructive in the way each panel member reacted to those comments.

Boy, would I like to meet and know that dear lady!

I’d say he’s a whore with a keyboard, except he fails so miserably on the ’minimize harm’ guidance that ’Propaganda Thug’ seems more apt.

And while it’s truly sad to see the Ethical Starch getting washed out of the Media (and not replaced,) the truth is – All Ethical Compasses – Business, Government, Military, Religious and Personal – seem broken in America, at the moment.

The only effective Leadership we can have is leadership based on Clarity of Vision – seeing what’s really present and ’in play’ to experience, free from the coloration of Ideology, and then pointing the way towards greater rationality, and more Peace.

Of all the institutions that have been plunged into Grover’s bathtub, the Free Press is the One we need back the Most. Our fellow Country men and women are, for the most part, literalists – they ’trust’ the words to explain their situation more than they ’trust’ the ’facts’ of their own experience.

When confronted with a ’narrative’ that differs from what their eyes are telling them – for instance, the â€Shepherds are Always Good†vs. ’seeing’ Wolves’ ears sticking out of the Shepherds’ Hoods – the resulting cognitive dissonance causes most People to ’clutch’ to the mental and emotional security blanket of their ’comfortable’ narrative, instead of ’seeing’ what’s actually happening and taking naturally appropriate actions.

We need the Press to tell the Truth, or too many of US will be too Confused to Act rightly according to the needs of the times.

Celebrating Novak’s ’hands-around-Our-throats’ shows that the Press is still flying the white flag of Submission to Bush’s Ethics-free (but constantly Loyalty Tested) Ideology, and Un-willing to deal with the facts of the Truth staring US in the face.

Professionalism is one thing; common sense is another. When you are dealing with information about government operations and operatives, I would think it is wise to check out the need for discretion, at a minimum. Maybe I am too cautious…

EW – Back on the Watergate thread, I realized that your work on the Plame Affair was far more damning to Bush and Cheney than the June 23, 1971 tape was to Nixon. In a conversation on that tape, Nixon instructs his minions – six days after the bungled burglary – to approach the Director of the CIA and ask him to then approach the Director of the FBI – and suggest that the investigation into the Watergate Break-in be dropped due to ’National Security’ concerns. It was the Conspiracy to Obstruct Justice in that conversation that ’got’ Nixon.

In your thorough and precise, yet highly readable style, you sorted-out the Truth of the ’Secret Mission’ to Leak Valerie’s ’Classified-until-only-hours-before’ Identity to Judy – all before Armitage even spoke to Novak.

You clearly documented and showed Bush’s and Cheney’s involvement in the authorizing and ordering of the Leak, and, in addition, you showed the disengenuous use of Executive-directed Compartmentalization by Bush and Cheney to cover-up their actions. Your comprehensive chaining of events from before to after stands above Nixon’s demise on the strength of just getting caught covering-up the act after-the-fact alone.

We’ll know the Country is coming back to its senses when outstanding investigative authors like yourself are held up as examples of Excellence in Truthful Reporting for all to see and admire.

Hopefully, one of these days, â€Anatomy of Deceit†and your work here at TNH will be regularly cited in the answer to the question, â€Why have a Free Press?â€

The status of journalists as â€professionals†has always given me pause. First of all, for very good reasons, all coming from freedom of speech and the press, there should be no licensing requirement for journalists that applies to all other recognized professions, from doctors to lawyers to nurses to teachers – the best of the blogosphere, especially our gracious hostess EW, is proof that an â€amateur†citizen journalist can have greater insight, higher standards and more determination than a talk-show-host-posing-as-a-journalist like Tim Russert. On the other hand, journalists take all the problems inherent is self-governing professions like the law or medicine, such as the problem of a self-interested body determining in its own discretion what is in the â€public interestâ€, without any of the mechanisms set up by statute to allow for public complaints that can lead to discipline in appropriate cases, even to the point of expulsion from the â€professionâ€. The fact that Novak, who has committed any number of â€disbarrable†offences against journalistic ethics (and perhaps broken the law as well) is giving lectures on ethics, while Dan Rather was banished from CBS for following a story to its logical conclusion, is a perfect example to me of how dysfunctional this â€system†is. This is one of my main problems with the existing and proposed â€shield†laws – as a lawyer, there are few privileges given more respect than that of the solicitor-client privilege, but it is more limited than that proposed for so-called â€journalists†under the shield laws – there has to be a solicitor-client relationship, it cannot cover illegal purposes, it does not cover every utterance by the client, it does not extend to situations where the privilege was waived, as in where other parties were made privy to the conversation (or, in the journalist world, where politicians make multiple leaks to multiple parties) – and, at the end of the day, while the Nifongs of the world are disbarred, Novak and others continue to make millions of dollars and suffer no consequences.

…just to clarify, I am not saying that there should not be protection for journalists protecting a confidential source, just that the current system allows everything, good and bad, to be cloaked by the invocation of the privilege by sometimes self-serving journalists who are unaccountable for the consequences of claiming the privilege in bad faith. Not to say that lawyers are not prone to abuse the privilege as well – many things, from the S&L collapse to Enron and any other failure of regulatory oversight, was enhanced by the dubious use of S-C privilege.

So did people like Jack Goldsmith and James Comey, but they get trotted out as heroes too. And by damn – I guess they are.

http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/u…..w-cases-2/

OK – I surrender. By all means – let’s crucify journalists at prosecutors whims. Let’s torture people all over with no cause. Let’s let DOJ not only order the torture, but cover it up – and crown them with garlands while the nymphs of the left sing tra la las and sprinkle flowers in front of them. Let’s keep up the pretense that the â€Muslim POWs†to use Pow Wow’s phrase at GITMO and held by the tens of thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan are POWs instead of protected persons and civilians sold to the US for torture.

After all, a story like el-Masri’s and Arars already get next to no press in the US while the architects of their torture get trotted out over and over as god damned heroes – so wouldn’t it be much more pleasant to just let DOJ classify the torture so no one has to besmirch their ears with it. Works for me. ANd it is so much more pleasant to go along with the story line that Novak is a really bad piece of work for violating all those ethical standards – like Mike Nifong – – but not like Comey in his Padilla presser. After all – isn’t that the legitimate use of the press? The one where there is no down side for the journalists? To scrivener what co-conspirator to torture tells them to print?

I give up playing the devils advocate. Its so much more fun to be a saint who can embrace the good guys and besides, my tra la las have gotten out of practice of late. It’s so nice and lulling – the way they drown out the sobs.

Maybee:
What part of â€I told him that I didn’t answer questions about my wife†is not a strong warning?

Come to think about it, Robert Novak, by printing that story, gave Progressives one of their big chances to get at the Bush Administration.

I would have thought Robert Novak would be one of your heroes.

P J Evans,

Thanks for correcting the italics problem, but please don’t feed the trolls.

William, I figure the trolls should at least understand the stuff they quote. (Besides, it’s a change from drawing a couple of miles of survey line.)

MayBee

Let me clue you into something about the English language. The stuff in rawstory that describes what Wilson said about his conversation in July 2003 is in reported speech, clearly marked as relating to that conversation. Like this:

â€The question of my wife’s last name never came up,†Wilson said.

Rather, he says he asked Novak to stop telling people around Washington that his wife worked for the CIA.

The tipoff is the past tense.

THen there is stuff that is not labeled as a report of what happened in that conversation, like this:

â€It is a compromise of my family’s personal responsibility and safety … not to mention treasonous,†said Wilson,

The tipoff here is the use of the present tense, which clearly indicates Wilson is saying this now but is not claiming to have said it to Novak then. In fact, the two pieces in this article that definitively describe Wilson’s version of the conversation are 1) Wilson’s claim that he didn’t tell Novak Valerie went by the name Wilson and 2) the claim that he told Novak not to go blab about Valerie to everyone. Both of those claims are completely consistent with everything published about the conversation, including Novak’s version in his book and the passage from Politics of Truth you quote here.

If Wilson told Novak not to print a story about Valerie he would have been verifiing that she was an agent. wilson was in a catch 22 whatever he said would not be good.

Trollfeeding …

MayBee, what’s your definition of ’forceful objection’? A fist to the face? Because it seems to me that Wilson did everything he could, short of breach of security regulations or physical assault on Novak.

(You don’t seem to have spent much time in areas where security is taken seriously. If something is classified, you don’t talk about it, ever.)

â€I admit to introducing something into the article that was not there–and not even suggested–by the plain language of the article.â€

It was indeed suggested by the plain language of the article:

â€The question of my wife’s last name never came up,†Wilson said.

Rather, he says he asked Novak to stop telling people around Washington that his wife worked for the CIA.

â€It is a compromise of my family’s personal responsibility and safety … not to mention treasonous,†said Wilson, who did not confirm to Novak that Valerie Wilson was a CIA agent.

The author introduces the quote with a paraphrase of what he said at the time, quotes him, and finishes the sentence containing the quote with what he said at the time.
If I am wrong about how I interpreted it, it is an honest mistake. It is not an especially well-written piece.

In fact, I’m not introducing the idea that Wilson is lying AT ALL. I am saying that if he did not say those things to Novak, then Novak is not lying about not being strongly warned.

I admit that I am too often a complete simpleton, but the relative discussion of whether or not Novakula was appropriately â€waved offâ€, (a term of art I recall Novak himself using early on) just baffles me. Seriously. If I recall correctly, CIA official Harlow told Novak twice, in an initial conversation where Novak called him and in a followup conversation where Harlow called Novak to reemphasize the point, that Novak should not use Plame’s name, that she did not send Wilson, that the Agency â€strongly recommended†against publishing any specifics at all regarding Plame and that it would create dangers. Then Joe Wilson tells Novak â€It is a compromise of my family’s personal responsibility and safety….â€. What the fuck more does a responsible journalist need? Answer: Nothing. Novak is NOT a responsible journalist; he is a Neocon/Off The Record Club/Hohlt/Duberstein propaganda hack.

EW is exactly right when she says â€Bob Novak has broken every single ethical principle purportedly espoused by the SPJ. Yet they gave him a soapbox to tell his ever-changing self-exonerating story nonetheless.†If the SPJ actually stood for half of what they rhetorically claim, they would have security throw Novak out on the street on his head (i.e. his butt) the second he showed up at the door.

Robert Novak has been reporting professionally and getting paid for it longer than most of us have lived.

His job is to write the story. He will write it where he finds it. Nothing more, nothing less.

He deserved that award.

The point is Novak knew Valerie was off limits, he has been around a long time. He knew what he was doing and he knew it was wrong.
The rest of it is smoke and spin.

the point here, I believe, is WTF was Novak–rather than Norman Solomon or Charlie Savage–doing at the Society for Professional Journalists (an oxymoron that–they are neither professionals nor journalists but I would say they are in the running as morons, if their lack of integrity were not so destructive). Well, it’s always something, huh?

Quick quiz. Which part of this sentence â€describes his past conversationâ€?

â€I hope he’s going to confession, because if not he’s surely going to Hell for his lies,†Wilson said.

This sentence, which I’ve quoted several times, is the sentence to which I refer:

â€(1)It is a compromise of my family’s personal responsibility and safety … not to mention treasonous,†said Wilson, (2)who did not confirm to Novak that Valerie Wilson was a CIA agent.

Part (1) you contend is his current commentary, while Part (2) of the sentence refers to his past conversation.

Here is the Wilson passage, in all of its glory:
I hope he’s going to confession, because if not he’s surely going to Hell for his lies,†Wilson said. current

Wilson, who had just published a column undercutting the Bush administrations claims about Iraq’s weapons capabilities, asked Novak before the column appeared not to portray him simply as a war critic, the Hill reported.past And Novak told the crowd current that Wilson stressed that his wife went by his last name, rather than her maiden name (Novak’s column reported her name as Valerie Plame). past

â€The question of my wife’s last name never came up,†Wilson said.past conversation

Rather, he says he asked Novak to stop telling people around Washington that his wife worked for the CIA.past conversation

â€It is a compromise of my family’s personal responsibility and safety … not to mention treasonous,current? †said Wilson, who did not confirm to Novak that Valerie Wilson was a CIA agent. past conversation

It is quite a time-traveling passage.

If Novak did not disclose to Wilson that he was going to write a story that included the info about Plame-Wilson, then how could Wilson have forcibly warned Novak not to publish it in the first place?

Wakarimasen.

But still the important thing is that no one here has the credentials to throw rocks at the SPJ!

bmaz,

you should be more respectful of your betters.