What Some Call Treason, Others Call Truth

[Guest guest]

Eric Alterman

 

 

04.21.2006

What Some Call Treason, Others Call Truth

 

Conservative blowhard and CNN talking head William Bennett gave America's

top newspaper reporters a backhanded compliment on Tuesday when he complained

that three 2006 Pulitzer Prize winners were " worthy of jail. "

 

Bennett was venting over the fact that Dana Priest of the Washington Post

and the New York Times' James Risen and Eric Lichtblau employed classified data

to expose administration malfeasance. (Priest broke the story of the CIA's

network of " secret prisons " in Europe, and Risen and Eric Lichtblau exposed the

story of the NSA's secret domestic wiretapping program--a subject Risen

treated at length in his book " State of War : The Secret History of the C.I.A.

and the Bush Administration.) Even worse than employing classified data,

Bennett said, was that these reporters had the temerity to publish their

stories

" against the wishes of the president, against the request of the president and

others, that they not release it. They not only released it, they publicized

it--they put it on the front page, and it damaged us, it hurt us. " "

 

 

As a result are they punished, are they in shame, are they embarrassed, are

they arrested? No...I think what they did is worthy of jail. " For all this

bluster, Bennett does (again, inadvertently), manage to make a point--one which

some other commentators took to be a sign of good reporting, rather than

Bennett's silly suggestion of treason. But Bennett isn't alone. Other

conservatives, such as the Powerline blog (who called the Risen and Lichtblau

piece

" treasonous " and columnist Mark Steyn, who says that even though he's

ineligible

to win a Pulitzer, he " wouldn't want the thing in the house " anyway), rail

against the awards because they feel the reporters have hurt national

security. Unsurprisingly, none of these conservative attackers felt compelled to

explain why these leaks should be punishable by prison while, say, leaks

lovingly

dealt out to administration-friendly reporters like the Post's Bob Woodward

or the Times' Judith Miller that dealt with no less secretive or sensitive

matters should be celebrated.

 

Many in the media noticed a similar pattern to the awards, though their

reactions were understandably proud, rather than censorious. The Washington

Post's Marc Fisher blogged that " The stories that won [the Pulitzer] prizes were

reported and written for the best of reasons, the reason that drew most of us

into this craft: To use the power of light to force the bad guys out of the

shadows. " Marketwatch's Jon Friedman put it more succinctly, noting that the

stories " accurately reflected the nation's growing discontent with President

Bush. " Indeed, a Harris Interactive Poll published in the Wall Street Journal

on Wednesday contained the now familiar headline that George W. Bush had

reached yet another milestone of presidential unpopularity, as a mere 35 % of

adults surveyed now think Mr. Bush is doing an " excellent or pretty good " job

as

president, compared with 63% of Americans who said Mr. Bush is doing an " only

fair or poor " job. It is stories like these that explain why.

 

Not included on Bennett's punishable-by-prison list was an additional set of

prize-winning stories that give lie to the fairy tale told to Americans by

the administration's apologists that, when examined in light of the available

evidence, appear to be full of sound and fury and yet signify absolutely

nothing--at least nothing that is also true. The ruins of right-wing Republican

rule are everywhere on display. The Washington Post's Susan Schmidt, James V.

Grimaldi and R. Jeffrey Smith won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative

Reporting for their wall-to-wall coverage of the Jack Abramoff scandal, which

demonstrates the corrupt level to which the so-called " conservative revolution "

has

sunk. And then there's the duo that share the National Reporting prize with

the Times' Risen and Lichtblau--the staffs of the San Diego Union-Tribune and

Copley News Service, for breaking the story of the rampant graft and bribery

that sent former Republican Rep. Randy " Duke " Cunningham to prison.

 

The Rocky Mountain News' Jim Sheeler pulled down a prize for Feature Writing

and photographer Todd Heisler won for Feature Photography with their

heartbreaking look at a year in the life of a Marine Corps officer in Colorado

who

is tasked with informing families that their sons and daughters have died in

combat in Iraq. The story and the pictures accompanying it, is one of the more

heartbreaking reads in the rapidly growing body of literature to come out of

the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and gives voice to the often muffled cries

of the families left behind in the wake of the death the wars have sowed.

 

In the Explanatory Reporting category, the Washington Post's David Finkel's

series on a U.S. funded program to promote democracy in Yemen took home top

honors. Finkel's two-part series exposed the sordid reality behind the Bush

administration rhetoric of democracy promotion, demonstrating the messy reality

it faces where the proverbial rubber hits the road.

 

Not to be denied, of course, were the heroic efforts in the

wake--literally--of Hurricane Katrina by the staffs the New Orleans

Times-Picayune and the

Biloxi Sun Herald, respectively, who shared the prize for Public Service. (The

Picayune also received the prize for Breaking News. These papers--publishing

by hook, crook and Internet from the eye of the storm--captured the failure

of their government to provide for their security in what turns out to have

been a widely predicted emergency. God help up us if the conservatives who seek

to intimidate the media into reporting only happy news about our government

had succeeded in the case of Katrina. Americans would be even less prepared

for its next disaster--or attack--as the reporters who tried to warn us might

likely be in jail. Here's to their courage, and let's hope it is matched in

the future by a commitment on the part of the stewards of our media

institutions to fight this administration's attempts to weaken the very

qualities that

make this country great--like the freedom to tell the truth, " without fear or

favor. "

 

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