PlameGate’s Disappearing Act
Rem Rieder at the American Journalism Review (with the hat tip to Public Eye):
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.
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.
It should be noted that the left is not giving up on this one, continuing to point ominously at Bush aides’ behavior vis-à-vis Plame and Wilson. But there’s little doubt that Armitage’s role is a body blow to the conspiracy theorists.
It was, as they say, a “stunning reversal,” the kind of development Ben Bradlee loved to half-kiddingly call “a correction.” It stood the official narrative of Plamegate completely on its head.
Not only was it a fascinating development, it was the kind of story that cried out for attention for fairness reasons. But that wasn’t destined to happen.
Consider: Between October 24 and 28, 2005, the week Libby was indicted for obstruction of justice and perjury (but not with leaking Plame’s name), the saga got more time than anything else on the nightly network newscasts, according to the Tyndall Report. When Libby was arraigned the following week, the story stayed in the Top Ten (at number eight). The week before the indictment it was No. 4.
When Armitage’s lawyer, confirming a report in a forthcoming book by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, said in late August that his client was indeed the guy, the development couldn’t crack the Top Ten. Nor could it the following week, when Armitage fessed up on national television. The story couldn’t compete with the likes of the death of the crocodile-hunting Steve Irwin.
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.
Rieder doesn’t lay the sudden dearth of coverage on liberal media bias so much as he does on embarrassment, and there may be something to that. It’s a well-known fact that the accusation always receives more play than the correction…
While it’s true that when you are working on a story that may bring down a president, that’s page one and above the fold. But when you have to admit you are only human and made a mistake, that’s page C21.
However, there is also something called journalistic integrity, which if the New York Times had any, would require it to print a dozen or so front page stories on how this all turned out.
This argument creates a straw man which doesn’t exist. The fact is that the Armitage story received front page treatment in the Times (as Rieder notes), was the first report on Keith Olbermann, etc. There was no “dearth of coverage” or page C21 treatment.
Also, the Armitage story and the Libby story are different. When a senior White House official is indicted for perjury, it should be front page news. Armitage was not indicted. What the two stories share in common is the revelation of Valerie Plame’s identity. What makes them different is as significant as what they have in common. (For that matter, the fact that Armitage was the first leaker does not exonerate Libby. We don’t know if Libby knew that Armitage spilled the beans, and both men leaked before the Novak piece was published. So both men did the same thing, albeit with apparently far different motives.)
Moreover, when the Times screws up a story — Jayson Blair being the obvious example — it gets front page coverage.
The implication that the Times and other media “got it wrong” about Libby is not a correct one.