Disclosure goes a long way toward mitigating sins.Woodward didn't disclose

[dajoki]

CIA Leak Scandal Should Prod Reporters to Clarify Sleuthing
Submitted by editor4 on November 28, 2005 - 3:03pm.
By Jerry Ceppos
Source: The Miami Herald

I never knew that a reporter could withhold the story of the year from his editor. You journalists are more interesting, or maybe just more mysterious, than I realized.

Most of us went into journalism so that we could illuminate the world by printing or broadcasting or posting news, not withholding it, especially when it's the hottest story going. At the very least, our goal used to be to tell the editor about the news and decide whether it's accurate enough and interesting enough to publish -- and to be sure that publishing it wouldn't violate any agreements that the organization has made.

When Bob Woodward withheld for two years (two years!) the news that he was given the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame very early in the saga -- withheld the information even from his editor, for Gutenberg's sake -- he in a way misled all of us about the facts of the case. Besides, if Woodward contributes to the mysteries of the ways we report the news, that simply feeds the wilder and wilder speculation about what makes journalists tick.

Disclosure

Woodward gave several interviews in which he criticized the prosecutor in the spy case. Should he have done that?

I hate to answer a question with a question, but how can the pivotal figure critique the case without admitting his own involvement? Journalists would have had a ball if Lewis Libby had babbled about the case before everyone knew that he was the target of the investigation. Disclosure goes a long way toward mitigating sins. Woodward didn't disclose.

more
http://mediachannel.org/blog/node/2066

[liberal43110]

1. It's not the crime...

As they say: it's not the crime, it's the cover-up.

[dajoki]

2. well withholding information...

for over two years is a cover up.