I’ll admit it: I have no idea what makes political reporters jump on a story. Occasionally what appears like a scandal-in-the-waiting will pop up and I’ll expect journalists hungry for a Pulitzer (or hoping to be the next Woodward & Bernstein) to pounce on it. Then, much to my chagrin, nothing happens.
Niger-gate seemed to capture the attention of the national media for a good two weeks, and for that, I was grateful. Looking back, I don’t know a) why it took them so long and b) what was unique about this story that got them so excited. After all, we knew the Niger claim was false (or at a minimum, highly dubious) in March. The media, at the time, yawned. Eventually, in June, Ambassador Joseph Wilson put his name on his information and suddenly the media went wild. It was the same story when he was an anonymous source talking to any reporter who was interested, but suddenly it was a story worthy of the cover of Time.
There were equally as troubling claims (I would argue they were outright lies) throughout Bush’s State of the Union that the media ignored. Some of them are even easier to debunk. The difference with Niger-gate was the White House ultimately admitted this was a mistake. As Slate’s Tim Noah recently explained, “The yellowcake lie landed on Page One solely because it occasioned a brief and fatal departure from the Bush White House’s press strategy of stonewalling.”
In other words, the White House learned a valuable lesson. If you’re caught lying, you can keep the news out of the media by simply denying it was a lie, regardless of how ridiculous or bold the denial has to be.
Which leads me to Valerie Plame, the covert CIA agent “two senior administration officials” outed to a conservative newspaper columnist.
Call me crazy, but this has all the markings of a huge scandal. You have a vindictive White House leaking word about a political enemy’s wife, you have WMD, you have international intrigue, and you have a potential felony being committed by two White House officials. What’s not to like?
Since Newsday broke the relevant details of the story, you also have outraged senators calling for a formal investigation and evasive answers from the White House press secretary about the situation. Even Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), not exactly a liberal Bush critic, conceded that the Senate will have to investigate the matter, and the best defense he cold come up with is that the Democratic complaints are “typical political talk.”
It practically begs for attention from a supposedly-inquisitive media. So far, however, there’s next to nothing.
Stories in the New York Times? Zero. The LA Times? Zero. The Boston Globe, Miami Herald, Chicago Tribune, and USA Today? A combined zero.
The Washington Post ran a story today — hidden deep in the paper on page A20 — about former CIA director John Deutch’s concerns about the failure to find WMD in Iraq. At the very end of the article, the Post devoted five paragraphs to the Plame controversy, noting that Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has asked the FBI to investigate “whether Bush administration officials identified the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson as a clandestine CIA officer.”
The Post wouldn’t even give the story its own article. They hid it at the end of an unrelated article — on page A20. I’m at a loss.