9.01.2006

Goodbye Joe Wilson

This Editorial from the Washington Post sufficiently brings to an end any curiosity I may have had about the whole "outing" of Valerie Plame. Actually, I've not been able to care for some time now, but obviously some people do, so to that end read on:

WE'RE RELUCTANT to return to the subject of former CIA employee Valerie Plame because of our oft-stated belief that far too much attention and debate in Washington has been devoted to her story and that of her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, over the past three years. But all those who have opined on this affair ought to take note of the not-so-surprising disclosure that the primary source of the newspaper column in which Ms. Plame's cover as an agent was purportedly blown in 2003 was former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage.
...
Nevertheless, it now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame's CIA career is Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming -- falsely, as it turned out -- that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials. He ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such as Mr. Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife. He diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush's closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It's unfortunate that so many people took him seriously.

If you're still interested, Christopher Hitchens has a similarly themed roundup of the absurdity that is/was the Wilson/Plame business.

8.29.2006

Broken Promises

Alright I know I promised that I would stop complaining about news coverage in the NYTimes but I stumbled onto this piece in slate that so devastatingly exposes the editorial biases of the paper I couldn’t help myself. I particularly liked how the author mentioned the intital “cultivation of a meretricious appearance of balance” to start off stories only to then stack the deck in favor of their ideological agenda. This also happens to be my primary gripe about the largely editorially identical NPR. Don’t agree? Look at the front page of the NYTimes sometime right as Morning Edition comes on (particularly after the Bush administration does something it finds particularly egregious) and marvel at their synchronicity – both in emphasis and tone.