The Plame Game Plays On

The Karl Rove-Valerie Plame-Joseph Wilson-Niger yellowcake-State of the Union chagrin-confidential sources dilemma-First Amendment martyr flap will be with us for a while. As will speculation and subplots.

*Where’s Robert Novak in all of this? The columnist was the first to drop the Plame name in public. Others are on thin ice and he skates?

*Rove rage: From political king maker and strategist extraordinaire to poster boy for the parsing of the letter and spirit of the law (about outing CIA operatives). After all, you can’t quote a wink and a nod. If nothing else, Karl Rove , the president’s deputy chief of staff and consigliere, violated an axiom any party hack knows instinctively. When you are a behind-the-scenes tactician and political architect and you BECOME the news, you become a liability for those you serve.

*White House mouthpiece Scott McClellan now knows first hand why Ari Fleischer stepped down in 2003 and probably how Ron Ziegler felt during Watergate. McClellan has become a media piñata for the press corps. The gotcha crowd can be prickly and preening on a good day, downright nasty and intimidating when they’re right. McClellan is hung out to dry while the Administration circles the wagons and devises a “smear campaign” defense.

*Poor Judith Miller . The veteran New York Times reporter probably deserves the benefit of the doubt. She obviously can’t do anything about others who are venerating her First Amendment martyrdom. And cooling her heels in the Alexandria Detention Center slammer for a brief period is surely not a career move. It’s even doubtful a book will result, let alone one that will zoom to the top of the New York Times Best Sellers List.

And don’t forget, the rationale for protecting her sources even transcends the sacrosanctity of the First Amendment. Recall that the last time one of hers was revealed, it turned out to be Almad Chalabi, the exiled leader of the Iraqi National Congress, who was pushing agenda-driven insider information. As we now know, that self-serving, faux intelligence — that Miller was a conduit for — helped buttress Bush Administration arguments that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.

Until Confidential Sources-Gate, the Chalabi connection had been a journalistic albatross Miller had been trying to distance herself from. Now she has.

No “People’s Right To Know” Everything

This much we know for sure. Long after the news cycle has discarded Time magazine’s Matt Cooper and the New York Times’ Judith Miller, the constitutional andethical controversy over journalists and their confidential sources will remain. As will several principles.

The first — and foremost — has been articulated countless times, most recently by Time itself: “

Subtitles, Please

I caught a British movie, “Layer Cake,” last week at Tampa Theatre. In all likelihood, it wasn’t very good, but I can’t be absolutely sure since I understood less than a third of the dialogue.

Thus, I propose a new cinematic rule of thumb: If a movie for American consumption contains more than one character with a blatant cockney accent, it needs subtitles. Ebonics is easier.

Fallen Troops Tribute

Call it America’s only true “reality show.”

ABC’s “Nightline” is to be saluted – again — for converting its Memorial Day program – for the second consecutive year — into a homage to U.S. troops who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a result, the names and photos of the fallen – now totaling more than 1,600 – have been nationally memorialized by a country and a culture otherwise caught up in sacrifice-less life as usual.

Then there’s the “Doonesbury” In Memoriam comic strip. Call it well intentioned.

For the second year running, cartoonist-polemicist Gary Trudeau has used a Memorial weekend comic strip to run nothing but the names of those who have died during “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” Trudeau is also to be commended – with one significant qualifier.

In general, “Doonesbury” belongs on the editorial – not the comics’ page. This is especially – and acutely — so with the In Memoriam strip.

“Doonesbury” is an editorial decision that individual newspapers have to make. Most make the wrong call and leave Trudeau satirically op-eding among the Garfields and Phantoms. It’s inappropriate, nothing more.

But a sincere and somber salute to fallen American G.I.’s deserves better than the light-hearted context of “Marmaduke,” “Mother Goose and Grimm,” “Jeff MacNelly’s Shoe,” “The Family Circus” and “Hi & Lois.”

Media Quotes

Several outtakes from the book “Bad News” by former CBS News senior foreign correspondent Tom Fenton:

*ABC News’ Peter Jennings: “I have lived in the region (Middle East); I know that not everybody is anti-American. There is less anti-Americanism in the Arab world, I think, than there is in Europe.”

*Iconic, former CBS News’ anchor Walter Cronkite (in answer to the question “Do you watch the CBS Evening News now?”): “Not regularly, no. There’s nothing there. There’s nothing there but crime and sob sister material. It’s scandal sheet stuff, tabloid stuff for the most part. That’s too bad. I would like to see it more responsible, if you please.”

*CBS News executive Don Hewitt, who invented the evening news format before going on to create “60 Minutes: “

Fleischer Flashback

As someone who has been on the receiving end of media queries, I found “Taking Heat” by Ari Fleischer an interesting – if not riveting – read. Fleischer, the former press secretary of President George W. Bush, gives an insider’s look behind (a few of) the scenes of the White House and what it’s like to joust with the gotcha-driven, White House press corps.

Fleischer takes the media to task for its lack of ideological diversity, obsession with conflict and accentuation of the negative.

He recounts a visit by the president in 2003 to Dearborn, Michigan, home to a large Arab-American population that includes many Iraqis. The reception was loud, and it was friendly. Fleischer called it a “hero’s welcome.” The broadcast networks largely ignored it. ABC kissed it off with “two sentences,” notes Fleischer.

He recalls asking Terry Moran, ABC’s White House correspondent, why the speech received such nominal coverage.

Moran’s answer: “I couldn’t get it on the air. If they had booed him, it would have led the news.”

Terri Schiavo Postmortums

*No one would debate that life has sanctity. What’s problematic is debating with the sanctimonious.

*The afterlife may be an afterthought, but not a living will. Not anymore.

*A legitimate tragedy morphed into a circus. “Jugglers For Christ” made it official. Eventually Jesse Jackson would enter the center ring.

*Michael Schiavo is easy to dislike but also easy to demonize by the usual demonizing suspects. In a case that had been playing out in the media for years, why had no one on Michael Schiavo’s side thought to consult a Public Relations 101 text?

*Sen. Mel Martinez proved that his pandering wasn’t limited to campaign expedience.

CEO’s Need To Ask: “What’s The Culture?”

Here’s some advice for prospective CEOs – as well as their counterparts in government and academe – courtesy of Robert McMurrian, director of the University of Tampa’s Center for Ethics.

“Upon assuming a position, a typical CEO initially used to ask: ‘Where is the profit?'” says McMurrian. “But what they need to ask first is: ‘What is this company about? What’s the culture I’m getting into?’ If you don’t address that one, you leave yourself wide open.

“Because if it happens on your watch,” underscores McMurrian, “you got it. You got it all. ‘I didn’t know’ is now a cop out.”

So what do CEOs – or university presidents or mayors – do when they’ve got a scandal born of charges against a key staffer and media scrutiny that won’t abate? Is “letting the process run its course” not a realistic – and fair – response?

McMurrian’s take: “You have legal issues and you have to protect yourself and your company or organization. A lot of your response frankly is related to public perception. Public perception is important. You probably get more leeway to support the person through the process if the internal perception is ‘this is kind of contrived.’

“Suspension is usually the best middle ground.”

Mayor’s Artful Inclusion

Those viewing the video shown before Mayor Pam Iorio’s “State of the City” speech had all the clues they would need about the viability of the city’s proposed new art museum. The lone museum reference was not as a cultural cornerstone and downtown catalyst – but as an entity celebrating its 25th anniversary.

The Dragon Boat races were more prominently mentioned.