'Wash Post' and Knight Ridder Clash Over Woodward

By: E&P Staff While famed reporter Bob Woodward's sudden entanglement in the Plame/CIA leak has been big news all week, few editorials weighed in on the matter, until now. On Saturday, Woodward's home paper, The Washington Post came to his defense, while an editorial published in many Knight Ridder papers had a largely different view.

The Knight Ridder editorial began: "The revelation that acclaimed journalist Bob Woodward sat on information in the CIA leak case for two years is difficult to defend even by 'mainstream' journalists who have admired his work for more than three decades."

It noted that while the prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was investigating a possible crime "Woodward wasn't exactly keeping quiet for the last two years. He was on the talk-show circuit as usual, belittling the investigation and referring to Fitzgerald's actions as 'disgraceful.' During this time, Woodward didn't even tell his bosses at the Washington Post that a White House source had tipped him off about Plame in 2003....

"One of the problems here is that Woodward, much like former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, is his own boss. He belongs to the 'star' system in journalism, consisting of an elite group of news gatherers who are newsmakers themselves, owing to their body of print and TV work in daily journalism and their books."

It concluded that "the belated testimony by Woodward may prolong the leak investigation. And it's likely to confuse the issue at the heart of the probe, centering on some of those old-fashioned building blocks of journalism: who told what to whom, and when."

The Washington Post editorial page, like Woodward himself, has long been skeptical of the value and importance of the Plame probe. Today, the paper declared, "It's not in the public interest for reporters to be forced to reveal their confidential sources in cases such as this. That's why Post reporter Bob Woodward should not be vilified for protecting the identity of his source in this complex affair."

It added, however, that Executive Editor Leonard Downie's "rebukes" of Woodward this week seemed "reasonable" as does Downie calling Woodward "one of the most careful, accurate and fair journalists I have ever worked with."

But it concluded that "over the years innumerable cases of official corruption and malfeasance have come to light thanks to sources being able to count on confidentiality. It's astonishing to see so many people -- especially in the journalism establishment -- forget that now. Many of those who condemn Mr. Woodward applauded when The Post recently revealed the existence of CIA prisons around the world, a story that relied on unnamed sources....

"Newspapers face difficult questions all the time in evaluating the reliability of sources and the appropriateness of publishing their secrets. But if potential sources come to believe that they cannot count on promises of confidentiality, more than the media will suffer."

Meanwhile, in a hardhitting column in the Los Angeles Times on Saturday, its media writer, Tim Rutten opined, "As the Valerie Plame scandal and its spreading taint have made all too clear, the trade in confidentiality and access that has made stars of reporters like Bob Woodward and Judy Miller now is utterly bankrupt.

"It still may call itself investigative journalism ? and so it once was ? but now it's really just a glittering and carefully choreographed waltz in which all the dancers share the unspoken agreement that the one unpardonable faux pas is to ask who's calling the tune."