E&P: Greg Mitchell gets it

Viveca Novak: Another Plame Journo Kept Her Editor in the Dark

A month ago I went off on the sorry state of journalism today. My full title was "Miasma of Putrefaction," though my editor truncated it to "Misama."

I was afraid I was a little late to the party, given the fact that the New York Times' Judith Miller's malfeasance had been public knowledge for a few weeks.

Well, uh, no.

Shortly after that piece appeared, the Washington Post's Woodward's bombshell hit. Now Time Magazine's Viveca Novak reveals her own similar mix of incompetence and disloyalty to her employer and her readers.

Greg Mitchell tees off:

Where will it end, and when will reporters pay with their jobs? First we learn that Bob Woodward failed to tell his editor for years about his role in the Plame/CIA leak case. Today, we find out that Time reporter Viveca Novak not only kept her editors in the dark about her own involvement, but even had a two-hour chat with the special prosecutor about it well before telling her superiors.

At the end of her first-person account at Time online today, we are told in a brief editor's note that she is by ”mutual agreement” now on a “leave of absence.” Has she been taken to the woodshed and, if not, why not?

Plamegate/Traitorgate is arguably now less significant for what it has shown us about those who make news and more for what it has uncovered about those who are supposed to report it.

Update: Digby's pissed.

I suppose we were all led astray by "All The President's Men" (ironically) which showed journalists using anonymously sourced information as a tip to pursue stories further or confirmation of facts they already knew, not as social currency or exclusive information for a book to be published long after the information means anything. Our bad. Apparently, it's fine for reporters to "gossip" freely among their fellow insiders about their sacred anonymous sources, but a federal crime to tell the public about it. We rubes are supposed to uncritically read their dispatches and buy their books so they can be well paid --- and leave the democracy business to our betters.