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Reader Jim J. writes in to take issue with an apparent contradiction during this morning's "Early Show":

"I was watching the Early Show this morning…The headline on the screen reads 'Libby Pardon', while at the VERY SAME TIME, Bill Plante's words are 'Libby has not been pardoned, he is still a convicted felon.' So which is it?"

Good catch, Jim J. The answer to your question is that Libby has not actually been pardoned – and that the person responsible for putting "Libby Pardon" onscreen made a mistake. From the president's statement on the matter:

Mr. Libby was sentenced to thirty months of prison, two years of probation, and a $250,000 fine. In making the sentencing decision, the district court rejected the advice of the probation office, which recommended a lesser sentence and the consideration of factors that could have led to a sentence of home confinement or probation.

I respect the jury’s verdict. But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby’s sentence that required him to spend thirty months in prison.

To commute a sentence is to make it less severe; a pardon, as Adam Liptak writes, "excuses or forgives the offense itself." In this case, the conviction stands, as well as the probation and fine – but the prison term that came with it has been erased.

Reader Jim J. writes in to take issue with an apparent contradiction during this morning's "Early Show":

"I was watching the Early Show this morning…The headline on the screen reads 'Libby Pardon', while at the VERY SAME TIME, Bill Plante's words are 'Libby has not been pardoned, he is still a convicted felon.' So which is it?"

Good catch, Jim J. The answer to your question is that Libby has not actually been pardoned – and that the person responsible for putting "Libby Pardon" onscreen made a mistake. From the president's statement on the matter:

Mr. Libby was sentenced to thirty months of prison, two years of probation, and a $250,000 fine. In making the sentencing decision, the district court rejected the advice of the probation office, which recommended a lesser sentence and the consideration of factors that could have led to a sentence of home confinement or probation.

I respect the jury’s verdict. But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby’s sentence that required him to spend thirty months in prison.

To commute a sentence is to make it less severe; a pardon, as Adam Liptak writes, "excuses or forgives the offense itself." In this case, the conviction stands, as well as the probation and fine – but the prison term that came with it has been erased.

Former CBS News correspondent Eric Engberg, who spent two decades covering Washington for the network, has passed along his analysis of the lessons of the Libby trial. Below, in question and answer form, he takes us through his conclusions. Think of this as an "Outside Voices" column, and bear in mind that the opinions expressed are Engberg's, not Public Eye's.

QUESTION #1 – Why did Vice President Cheney order Scooter Libby to conduct the smear campaign against the Wilsons when he could have easily picked up the phone and called a few Administration-friendly reporters, like Bob Novak and Judy Miller, and do the leaking himself?

ANSWER – Cheney knew he needed what in intelligence work is called a “cutout,” because he understood perfectly well that revealing the identity of a CIA undercover agent was morally wrong and almost certainly illegal. The juror who said Scooter was a “fall guy” had it right. But doesn’t that make Cheney both a shameless manipulator and a terrible coward?

The premeditated nature of the attack on Joe Wilson can be assessed further by the fact that Libby, given Cheney’s direction, did not peddle the Plame outing to an obvious Administration fugleman such as Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity. The carefully conceived plot called for a Wilson-Plame revelation that looked like real journalism, not propaganda.

QUESTION #2 – Is there any group that stands lower in public esteem than professional journalists?

ANSWER – Yes, defense lawyers for indicted government officials. Attempts by Scooter’s legal beagles to belittle the memories and honesty of journalists such as Tim Russert and Matt Cooper to influence the jury blew up in their faces. But the fact that reporters forget dates, lose notebooks and can’t decipher their own notes, all well established by the trial testimony, is not going to put any kind of sheen on the Washington press. They looked pathetic, as Cheney might say, “Big time.”

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"As for the media, most of our brethren were celebrating the conviction yesterday because it damaged the Bush Administration they loathe."

--Wall Street Journal, March 7, 2007



To: Members Of Mainstream Media Cabal
From: Brian Montopoli, CBS Public Eye
CC: The Democratic Party, Rosie O'Donnell, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Comrades,

That was quite a rager last night, huh? I haven't been this hungover since after we doctored up that "macaca" video. As soon as the Libby verdict was announced, CBS News Prez Sean McManus sent a whole bunch of cake, all this top shelf liquor, and a selection of those delicious French pastries down to the newsroom. Five gin fizzes later, George Soros and a whole bunch of gay atheists show up, and Katie's got us cracking up with her "you might be an evangelical" jokes. I heard the parties were killer all over town – over at CNN, Blitzer and Dobbsie threw on Cheney and Nixon masks and totally made out. It was awesome!

Too bad about all those buzzkills, though. Here we are trying to celebrate the conviction and people like Howard Kurtz – who went to the University of Buffalo, by the way – are writing about how the proceedings gave journalism "a black eye." And in San Francisco they're whining about subpoenas. Waaah! Jeez, we don't care, jerks – an aide to Cheney got in trouble or something! At least the good folks at the Wall Street Journal has the good sense to point out that's all we care about. Not like that lame Bob Steele at The Poynter Institute, who said "[t]here is significant concern about what this could mean to journalists." Whatever, dork! Party! Woo-hoo!

Later,
Brian

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.

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If you've been a follower of the Libby trial drama over the past several weeks, you'll know that searching for a jury became a particularly thorny problem along the way. That's because in a Washington-based trial that cuts through the intersection of media and politics, everyone seemed to have some connection to a person involved with the case.

As it turns out, however, one juror ended up being particularly useful to the media. Denis Collins, a journalist who has written for the Washington Post, among other papers, outside of the courthouse immediately following the verdict to provide a detailed account of the jury's deliberations and answer questions from reporters.

For a trial that has garnered so much media attention, that's a rare and valuable bonus.

CBS producer Deirdre Hester, who has covered the trial from the beginning, told us that Collins' statements were "absolutely" helpful to journalists in reporting the story.

"I think the jurors were well aware of the tremendous interest from the media," she said. "Collins said the other jurors did not feel comfortable coming out and talking."

But Collins felt an obligation as a journalist to share details with reporters about deliberations. "He said because of his profession he 'didn't think he could just walk away and not say anything,'" said Hester.

Not since the death of Anna Nicole have I seen the cbsnews.com newsroom as worked up as it was at noon today, when the "Scooter" Libby verdict was announced. In our email inboxes over the past few days, we've gotten regular updates about what was going on with the jury – they're reviewing a note! – and speculation on when a verdict might be announced. Now that the news has finally broken, it's dominating the cable networks and news Web sites, and analysis is already popping up all over the place.

This reaction has driven home to me a point a few folks have made as this whole thing has moved forward: Namely, that the media may care a whole lot more about the Libby trial than most Americans do. The Libby case, with its connections to the Plame affair and Martha Stewart-ish verdict, is pretty complicated, and I have to wonder how much people really understand (or care about) the details. Reporters paid close attention to the case, since it opened up questions about reportorial privilege and offered up scenes like NBC's Tim Russert being called to testify. But it's hard to imagine that the average American took much from this case beyond some vague sense that there is corruption in Washington – a revelation that surely doesn't come as all that much of a surprise.

…And he's guilty on 4 out of 5 counts. Read all about it here.

UPDATE: Watch the press conference here.

When you observe Washington, D.C., political dramas long enough, they become somewhat predictable.

At Time's Swampland blog yesterday, Ana Marie Cox offered some safe bets on what today's coverage of the closing arguments in the Scooter Libby trial would look like. At the top of the list: "At least one reporter will lead with a description of Libby's lawyer [Ted] Wells tearing up as he delivered his last lines."

The results are now in, and descriptions of the sobbing were varied. The Los Angeles Times only insinuated tears, writing that "when Wells finished his remarks with an emotional flourish, Libby stepped over to pat him on the back, as if the attorney, rather than the defendant, was the one in need of consolation."

NBC's "Nightly News," the only evening newscast to do a full story on the trial last night (Washington bureau chief Tim Russert's testimony is at the center of the whole brouhaha, after all) didn't mention the tears explicitly, either. But correspondent Kelly O'Donnell did describe Wells' closing as "fiery" and "passionate."

USA Today, however, went ahead and called Wells "tearful" during his final statements to the jury.

The New York Times went a bit further, writing that Libby's lawyer offered "an intensely emotional defense ending in a choked sob."

A description of the sobbing made it pretty close to the lead in a profile on Wells in the Washington Post: "Then, as he asked the jury to presume Libby's innocence and 'give him back to me,' Wells began to cry. He sat down at the defense table and wiped his eyes. It was a strange moment in a strange case."

The Wall Street Journal's law blog wins the prize, however. There, the tears landed right in the headline of a post on the trial: "Ted Wells Sobs, Jury Poised to Start Deliberations."

If nothing else, the trial of Scooter Libby has provided an unprecedented public display of the symbiotic relationship between reporters and their government sources. So it's little surprise that this display has become one of the most popular storylines in coverage of the trial.

The CIA leak investigation, after all, ignited a firestorm of criticism about anonymous sourcing – a journalistic convention that's a veritable hallmark of political reporting these days.

The first installment of "Frontline's" "News War," which was formulated to spell out the "political and legal forces challenging the mainstream news media today," was devoted almost entirely to the CIA leak investigation and its effect on reporters.

Monday's edition of the trial included a parade of reporters taking the stand. The Los Angeles Times today highlights some of what came out of their testimony.

The reporters were "aware of the stakes" of testifying in a criminal trial about the details of their conversations with confidential sources. Which is why "almost every reporter who has testified has offered a nuanced explanation seemingly aimed more at potential sources than at sitting jurors," as the Times puts it. "Several dwelt on their efforts to get a 'personal waiver' from Libby or other sources, meaning permission to violate the initial terms of the interview."

And for all the hand-wringing over whether anonymous sources are good or a bad part of the game, Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler suggested he would have a pretty hard time doing his job without them. "Almost every single conversation I have in Washington is on background," he told jurors.