As Media Matters reported last week, a Time article on the Plame scandal contained statements by Scott McClellan that at least three of the reporters involved knew to be untrue.
John Dickerson, one of the three, then went on the Al Franken Show to defend their actions. Here's Dickerson:
And the reason you can't just come out and say, "They're big liars, they're big liars," is because you end up giving up a source.And there's the problem: Karl Rove is not a source.
Rove is not providing information. Rove is not upholding the people's right to know. Rove's job is to propagate the party line, and that's exactly what he does. Always. 100% of the time. No exceptions. I mean, really now: if anyone in the Washington press corps is naïve enough to believe that Rove has moments of candor in which he lets slip nuggets of information without calculating the political effect, they have no business working as reporters.
And for those who do know better, there is no conceivable excuse for helping Rove do his job. If somebody is giving you spin, print it with attribution or don't print it at all.
All of which is why this rationale is--to put it as charitably as possible--completely delusional:
You have a source, and you make an agreement with that source not to blow their identity. That, you have to keep that agreement. And the reason you do that, even in a situation where some people may, for all those people who may hate Karl Rove and this White House and want them to be outed, you've got to remember that the same protections are the ones that protected the people who came forth about the NSA wiretapping. And people come forward about things all the time knowing their cover isn't going to get blown. Sometimes it's in an instance that people would like, because it uncovers an NSA wiretapping scheme that they don't think is appropriate, and in some cases it protects people that they hate and would like to see run out on a rail. But you can't pick and chose.When Karl Rove comes forward and gives some reporter information that is genuinely in the public interest, when he blows the whistle on illegal actions by his superiors or gives us genuine insight into how the White House operates or otherwise provides information that we really ought to know, then and only then will it be anything other than a grotesque obscenity to mention his name in the same breath as the person who blew the whistle on NSA wiretapping. And when and if that happens, I will be all in favor of maintaining Rove's anonymity.
I'm not holding my breath.
[That's all, folks]
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