Bob Novak Comes Out; WaPo’s Howard Kurtz Keeps Lying
Novak’s complete column is up at Human Events online. I’ll leave a detailed critique of it to others who have followed much more closely than I what may go down in history as the biggest non-story story ever.
Tuesday evening, The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz had this howler about the background of the Novak-Plamegate story:
Novak triggered one of the capital’s most tangled investigations with a July 2003 column reporting that Plame had suggested sending her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, to Niger to investigate whether Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was trying to obtain nuclear material from that country — an unsupported claim that was included in President Bush’s State of the Union speech. Fitzgerald, who decided last month not to pursue charges against Rove, is prosecuting I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, a former chief of staff for Vice President Cheney, for allegedly lying to a grand jury. Judith Miller, then a New York Times reporter, went to jail for 85 days last year for initially refusing to name Libby as her source.
To the bolded text above, the correct response is “horsecrap.”
The detailed response belongs to Christopher Hitchens at FrontPage. As Hitchens repeatedly points out later in the column, the first three paragraphs of that column seal the deal.
When, if ever, will the WORMs (Worn-Out Reactionary Media, known to most as The Mainstream Media), stop lying about the proven truthfulness of the sixteen words?
_____________________
UPDATE: Some of the only-scratches-the-surface substantive reax to Novak’s column is at Hot Air, Stop The ACLU, Wizbang, Protein Wisdom, Outside the Beltway, and Blue Crab Boulevard.
UPDATE 2: “S.O.B.er” Porkopolis was ahead of me on the “sixteen words” story, and uses FactCheck.org as his source.
UPDATE 3: Of course, Tom Maguire, who has owned the truth-telling franchise on this story from the beginning, was going to weigh in.
UPDATE 4: Noteworthy July 12 updates — Wizbang, notes the press’s “la-la” on Novak finding Plame’s occupation in Joe Wilson’s Who’s Who entry, and separately beats on Kurtz for ignoring it; Jonathan Adler at Volokh; and Below the Beltway.
Last night at PostWatch I posted a full rundown on how often Kurtz and other writers at the Post have gotten this “unsupported claim” meme wrong. Lots of links for those who are interested.
Comment by Christopher Fotos — July 12, 2006 @ 10:58 am
Howard Kurtz Makes An Unsupported Claim
In Novak Says He Named 3 Sources in Leak Case, slated for page 4 tomorrow, Kurtz covers the Robert Novak column about the latter’s testimony in the Valerie Plame investigation. I’ll leave the heavy lifting to Plameologists like
Trackback by PostWatch — July 12, 2006 @ 11:04 am
#1 and #2, great work.
Comment by TBlumer — July 12, 2006 @ 11:21 am
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