All Blog Posts from Public Eye

There was uprising in the streets of Blogistan last week when news broke out that Newsweek had handed over some weekly space to blogger-slash-bullseye Markos Moulitsas and Bush’s Former Brain Karl Rove.

All Hail Kos! Or The Return of Rove! The responses varied from blood in the water to ho-hum to “what have we come to.”

In an online column – featuring a salty expletive, I gotta warn you – Columbia Journalism Review prognosticated:

A prediction: Meacham will succeed in getting Moulitsas and Rove’s articles linked on plenty of political blogs, and that will allow Newsweek to claim success, But I would be shocked if either one writes anything that isn’t utterly predictable or that falls outside the narrow realm of the worlds inhabited by their ideological fellow-travelers.

And Jeff Bercovici at Portfolio shrugged:

Is that what it's about? Balance? So you have a liberal shouting on one side, and a conservative shouting on the other side, and if their voices exactly cancel each other out, you've done your job? That sounds like Crossfire, or like the obligatory post-debate spin room, not like a magazine with an outsize regard for its own reputation.

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It's not quite "Moore Vs. Gupta" – the TV "event" of a debate over health care between Michael Moore and CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta from earlier this summer – but we've had another War of Words in MediaLand going on for more than a week now: Karl Rove versus Bill Moyers.

It all began with Moyers' editorial-slash-political obituary of Karl Rove in the wake of Rove's departure from the White House. Moyers made the case that Rove focused a lot of energy on values voters, to Bush's political advantage. It's an innocuous statement, given that Rove reportedly had admitted this to myriad reporters. But what drew people's attention was one line of Moyers' in particular.

At his press conference this week he asked God to bless the president and the country, even as reports were circulating that he himself had confessed to friends his own agnosticism; he wished he could believe, but he cannot.

A few days later, Rove was asked about these comments on "Fox News Sunday." He responded pointedly:

I'm a Christian. I go to church. I'm an Episcopalian. I think he may have taken a comment that I made where I was talking about how — I have had colleagues at the White House — Mike Gerson, Pete Wehner, Lindsey Drouin, Josh Bolten and others — who I'm really impressed about how their faith has informed their lives and made them really better people…

You know, Mr. Moyers ought to do a little bit better research before he does another drive-by slander.

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It's Thursday, and that means it's time for the Public Eye Chat. This week's subject is CBS News White House Correspondent Bill Plante, who caused a stir at Karl Rove’s farewell press conference when he asked President Bush “If he’s so smart, why did you lose Congress?”

Matthew Felling: Interesting week. Anything surprise you?

Bill Plante: Nothing much, actually. Anytime you challenge or appear to challenge the president – and I don’t care if the president is a Republican or a Democrat – there are people who will take issue with it and tell you it’s inappropriate. And you kind of expect that. I knew that what I did on Monday was smart-assed, but I think that that’s beside the point.

Our asking questions should not be dependent on what the White House thinks the mood or the tone of an event should be. And the fact that they say ‘no questions’ or don’t allow time for questions really has nothing to do with it. They don’t have to answer, but I think we need to preserve and aggressively push our right to ask.

Matthew Felling: This week, you asked a question, it got uploaded on the web, it got broadcast everywhere. Did you see any increased polarization or partisanship in the responses you received?

Bill Plante: Yes, the response was instant because of the Internet. In this case, my question got put up on DCFishbowl and then on Drudge, so then it spread like wildfire. That’s no surprise, since there are people that monitor those sites and others everyday.

When I did this 20 years ago in the Rose Garden, I yelled a question at Ronald Reagan at the ‘Teacher of the Year’ event as he was leaving and going inside. Several of the teachers complained and said I disrupted things and that it was inappropriate. In that case, I got a few phone calls but then had to wait for the angry letters to come in. Then after that, I wrote a Washington Post Outlook piece about questioning the president. It took more than a week to play out.

But in this case, it was instantaneous, of course. But I know that’s how things happen these days.

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One of the accidental subplots to Karl Rove’s departure yesterday was a question directed to President Bush by CBS White House correspondent Bill Plante at Rove's farewell press event. His question was picked up by a DC media blog and generated many responses. So we asked Bill for his side of the story, which follows.

As the President and Karl Rove walked away from the lectern after their emotional announcement of Rove’s resignation, I yelled a question.

“If he’s so smart, why did you lose Congress?”

The President, as usual, didn’t answer.

That’s OK – he doesn’t have to if he doesn’t want to.

But judging by some of the reaction, you’d think I had been shouting obscenities in church!

“Unprofessional;” “Inappropriate;” “Unbecoming;” “Doesn’t show much class;” “you are a total idiot;” “Shill for the liberal Democrats.”

People who sympathize with the President – no matter who the President happens to be – always seem to think it’s impolite to yell questions. Or they argue that the question is inappropriate at the moment. That may sometimes be true, but not [this time].

Rove has been a controversial figure in this administration, the man most often credited or blamed with framing support for the war by politicizing terrorism.

There was no time to frame that question because the event this morning was a statement, not a news conference. So I asked a more direct one. I thought it unlikely that they would answer, but it’s always worth a try.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been blasted for yelling. Twenty or so years ago, I yelled a question at President Reagan as he left the Rose Garden after the annual Teacher of the Year ceremony.

One woman wrote to tell me that I was a guest in the President’s house and ought to be behave as one.

Ten years ago, I asked President Clinton a question which brought a red-faced angry response.

The point is that reporters are not here as guests. We’re here to ask questions.

Why?

Because if we were ever to agree to “behave,” we’d be walking away from our First Amendment role – and then we really would be the shills we’re so often accused of being.

Some sadistic producer has posted this distressing video, from last night's Radio and Television Correspondents' dinner in Washington, D.C., on the CBSNews.com homepage. Thanks for ruining my morning, guys.

And in sad news for those of us who are home at 2:00 PM on a Tuesday, Fred Thompson's possible run for the White House might mean that we'll be deprived of Law & Order reruns, thanks to equal time laws. As the Washington Post notes, "[d]uring the 2003 gubernatorial race in California, television stations dropped all Arnold Schwarzenegger movies out of a real fear that showing them would require them to give countless hours of free airtime to all 134 other candidates for governor."

Oh, and about that dinner? At one point, "Brian Wiliams burped the 'Battle Hymn of the Republic.'" Bet you wish you were there!

For reporters covering the CIA leak probe, the other shoe dropped today with news that White House aide Karl Rove would not be indicted. No shoes were dropped yesterday, however, during another pre-trial hearing on the Scooter Libby case – one of several that have taken place since the former vice president’s aide was indicted. Covering the Libby case generally entails “mostly a lot of dull moments” and a few very exciting ones, says CBS News Producer Beverley Lumpkin, who told me a little bit about what it's been like covering the case so far. “Despite the yammering and bloviating of several bloggers over the past several days, no news was committed” at yesterday’s hearing, Lumpkin wrote in an e-mail.

Much of the content from yesterday's hearing was likely only of interest to those journalists who are familiar with the most arcane of legal procedures, Lumpkin said -- and there aren't too many of those. The issues discussed were simply “much too inside,” said Lumpkin. “They’re not the kind of thing anyone will run off and file a report on.” While yesterday’s hearing didn’t make news, “it’s still important to know what’s going on,” said Lumpkin.

Indeed, yesterday’s hearing offered at least some indication that something newsworthy might be happening in the near future. Lumpkin described this series of events in an e-mail following the hearing:

After the Libby hearing there was some mystery as Fitzgerald was led away down hallways and through secret locked doors by the administrative assistant to Chief Judge Thomas Hogan. Three intrepid reporters followed along and soon determined the two had disappeared behind a door that leads to both a private dining room for the judges, and a back stairwell that goes both up to the judges' chambers and down to the parking garage. So maybe Fitzgerald was being taken to lunch? Or shown how to get to the garage without being further accosted by unruly reporters? Or was he being led upstairs to have a secret meeting with the Chief Judge? That possibility is potentially newsworthy, because the Chief Judge oversees all grand jury matters. Was Fitzgerald giving the Chief Judge a status report on Rove? Alas, the administrative assistant refused any comment afterwards.

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Now that we know White House Karl Rove won’t be indicted by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, we can move on with the case and start tying up some loose ends. One of those loose ends is pointed out by Washington Post media scribe Howard Kurtz this morning:

So after five grand jury appearances and many months of twisting in the wind, Karl Rove dodges an indictment bullet in the Valerie Plame leak case. I wonder if Truthout.org, which reported that Rove had already been charged, will be issuing a full retraction.

Truthout is the Web site which published a report a month ago claiming, as fact, that Rove had already been indicted. Despite direct denials from Rove’s lawyers, the Web site and the reporter, Jason Leopold, continued to stand by the story. Leopold went so far as to promise to name his sources if they were proven to have misled him.

Well, we’re waiting for that disclosure – and the retraction.

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As the journalism world continues to try and figure out what to think of the USA Today report on the NSA telephone database, there are some stark reminders that, more than ever, consumers of information and news are well advised to follow the old “buyer beware” rule of thumb.

Last week’s report from the National Post’s Web site about a supposed Iranian law that would require Jews, Christians and other non-Muslims in that country to wear identifying “badges” was just the latest example of a story that sped around the world before being verified in any meaningful way. The Canadian paper’s report drew rebukes from members of Congress in the United States and the Prime Minister of Canada, once again proving the old saw that a lie can make it around the world before the truth gets its boots on. Here’s how the AP cleared things up over the weekend:

On Friday, a Canadian newspaper, The National Post, quoting Iranian exiles, said the law would force Jews, Christians and other religious minorities to wear special patches of colored cloth to distinguish them from Muslims. The report drew a condemnation from the United States, which said such a law would carry "clear echoes of Germany under Hitler."

A copy of the draft law obtained by The Associated Press made no mention of religious minorities or any requirement of special attire for them, and the Post later posted an article on its Web site backing off the report.

Instead, the draft law is aimed at encouraging more traditional dress among Muslims, particularly women. An attempt at reigning in some of the more liberal, Western-leaning changes in Iran’s society is newsworthy in and of itself. But it’s not quite the rise of some Fourth Reich that it seemed for a time in the wake of the initial story.

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Has Karl Rove been indicted? That was the big rumor sweeping the Web over the weekend, courtesy of a report on the liberal Web site Truthout.org. On Saturday, Jason Leopold reported on the site that President Bush’s political architect had been informed of a pending indictment:

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald spent more than half a day Friday at the offices of Patton Boggs, the law firm representing Karl Rove.

During the course of that meeting, Fitzgerald served attorneys for former Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove with an indictment charging the embattled White House official with perjury and lying to investigators related to his role in the CIA leak case, and instructed one of the attorneys to tell Rove that he has 24 business hours to get his affairs in order, high level sources with direct knowledge of the meeting said Saturday morning.

The day before, Leopold reported that Rove had informed President Bush and White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten he would be indicted and would leave his White House post immediately once it was announced. The basis for these reports? “Sources,” of course.

Had either of these stories appeared on the front page of The New York Times, or in Newsweek magazine, we would be in the throes of a media feeding frenzy. The Sunday Show slates would have been hurriedly rearranged to capitalize on this new “bombshell” and America would have woken up this morning to watch Rove make the quick walk-and-duck from his front door to his waiting car. But so far, Leopold’s story stands alone.

Update: Read below for an Editor's Note clarifying this post.

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The blogosphere (at least the part of it intrigued by media and politics) was holding its collective breath today waiting for Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s announcement on possible indictments related to the CIA leak case. Some were wary of the early media reports of the news that vice presidential adviser I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was expected to be indicted and Karl Rove was not, but would remain “under investigation” by the special counsel.



Once the official news broke that Libby was indicted on charges of obstruction of justice, making a false statement and perjury, and had submitted his resignation, TVNewser kept track of the networks’ coverage and other blogs began to weigh in before, during and after Fitzgerald’s news conference.

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