In The Libby Trial, A Media Subplot

A day after the Scooter Libby verdict, the media – pretty much the only group of people that seemed to really care about this trial – has unleashed a flood of reaction.

Other than Libby, after all, it was the media that had the most at stake in this fight. The case unleashed a storm of questions about the relationship between government and media and between reporters and anonymous sources.

Some believe that the biggest consequence for media is the possibility that this case – which led to the subpoenaing of a number of reporters and the jailing of Judy Miller – has set a precedent in which more reporters will be subpoenaed in criminal trials and forced to reveal their confidential sources.

The general counsel of Hearst Corp., which owns the San Francisco Chronicle (where two reporters were subpoenaed to reveal their sources for a story on the BALCO steroid scandal) told the AP that her company has gotten 84 subpoenas in the past two years. "Previously, Hearst might have seen only five subpoenas in a two-year period, a jump that Burton blames partly on a Bush administration eager to go after journalists," wrote the AP.

And as far as media-watcher Tom Rosenstiel is concerned, this case will make prosecutors even more likely to compel journalists to testify. If they do – as a veritable parade of reporters did during the Libby trial – that could mean fewer whistle-blowers coming forward in the future.

"A source with confidential information is going to see this and say, 'All I saw in the Libby case is that all of you reporters testified,' " Rosenstiel told the San Francisco Chronicle.

The rare look into reporters' dealings with confidential and government sources didn't do any favors for the media in terms of the public's perception of how journalists do their jobs, Howard Kurtz writes today. Judy Miller lost notebooks and forgot the names of sources. Matt Cooper couldn’t understand his own notes. Bob Woodward forgot to disclose that Richard Armitage had told him about Valerie Plame.

And Joseph Wilson, the former ambassador at the center of the whole kerfuffle, says that the Libby trial revealed that the press was continually manipulated by the White House.

"One of the subplots of this whole trial, one of the things that's come out is the extent to which press was used and abused by the administration, by senior officials in this administration," he told reporters yesterday.