Wednesday, July 21, 2004
If you remember, a while back some Republican staffers on the Judicial committee discovered that a computer server used by both Democrats and Republicans was wide open and allowed everyone to read everyone elses' memos. When the Republicans saw what Ted Kennedy was doing (he was delaying a vote on a judge so that judge wouldn't affect the outcome of a civil rights case... which is way beyond jury tampering, it's judge tampering) and that the Democrat members of the Intelligence Committee were pre-scheduling no-votes (without hearing evidence) to have the most impact against Bush's re-election, someone blew the whistle to the press. Amazingly, to me, the press mostly focused on the Republicans reading the Democrat memos and not on Kennedy's case tampering and the dangerous games being played by the Democrat members of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Now we find that Sandy Berger, the immediate past National Security Advisor, is caught removing and destroying ultra-top-secret documents. And even though it is a big story, just like the memos were a big story, the spin is already moving to "who told the press" rather than "look what he did." Isn't it funny that the press already knows who spilled the beans, because the beans were spilled to them; but they pretend to not know because that's somehow better journalism? It has been repeated elsewhere already and often, but if the press would just ask themselves, "How would I write this story if it was Condi Rice and not Sandy Berger?" their stories would be more fair.
Now we find that Sandy Berger, the immediate past National Security Advisor, is caught removing and destroying ultra-top-secret documents. And even though it is a big story, just like the memos were a big story, the spin is already moving to "who told the press" rather than "look what he did." Isn't it funny that the press already knows who spilled the beans, because the beans were spilled to them; but they pretend to not know because that's somehow better journalism? It has been repeated elsewhere already and often, but if the press would just ask themselves, "How would I write this story if it was Condi Rice and not Sandy Berger?" their stories would be more fair.
