Digby on the Leak story

Hullabaloo: "This story is the weirdest kabuki dance I've ever seen. I thought it was absurd when the news anchors held the exit poll results but winked and nodded all day about the outcome. (That's become so bizarre after the last two elections, however, that their winks and nods will be meaningless in any close election.) But this is ridiculous. We have big time reporters in the Washington press corps who know a lot more about what is going on than they are saying. A number of them have been interviewed by the Justice department or testified. They are part of the story. And yet they pretend that they are 'objective' reporters who have no personal knowledge of events and don't even feel the need to issue a disclaimer saying that they had been interviewed or they testified and can't talk about it.

I have been hard on Judith Miller for not writing anything, but I'm beginning to really believe that she is in legal jeopardy. (That doen't excuse the NY Times, of course, for their failures.) For the life of me, I can't understand any journalistic ethics that would hold that it is ok for Chris matthews and Andrea Mitchell to discuss the ins and outs of a highly detailed story, speculate about the prosecutor and who he's talking to, without having to say that they are personally involved in the case. But then I'm just an amoral, psuedonymous blogger from nowhere who can't be trusted. "