This week saw the second hearing for David Aptaker for justice of the family and probate court.
What wasn't covered by the media was majority of the subsequent questions asked him by the...
Novak was, above all, a primary source, says the Herald's Rachelle Cohen
posted by Ralph Ranalli on August 19, 2009
Washington Post columnist Robert Novak's death marks the further erosion of that most perishable commodity in the blogosphere/punditsphere that drives today's political news: a primary source.
So says Boston Herald Editorial Page Editor Rachelle Cohen. Cohen knew Novak, whose column with longtime writing partner Rowland Evans ran in the Post for 45 years, and often hosted him when he was in town.
"Most of the blogosphere is derivative," Cohen told me in an interview this morning. "He was the one with the sources, he was the one breaking the news."
First and foremost, she said, "he was just one of the best damn reporters in all of Washington, it wasn't just a matter of ideology. He was the quintessential Washington skeptic. He just did his homework and it's the kind of thing I wish more people did."
Much of the reporting about Novak's death has emphasized his July 14, 2003 column that blew CIA agent Valerie Plame's cover and the ensuing scandal that erupted after it became clear that the leak of Plame's identity was part an orchestrated campaign to discredit her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.
To his harshest critics, the Plame column was an ideological hatchet job, but others - notably Jack Shafer in Slate - have taken a more nuanced view, maintaining that it was more a product of Novak's journalistic competitiveness than his political conservatism.
Cohen said it isn't necessarily fair to judge Novak by "one story in a 50-year career," but added that the Plame scandal can't be easily dismissed either. In the end, she said, it served a useful purpose.
"It did raise the whole discomfort level of confidential sources and how they use you," she said.
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Comments
No comment here.
If I wrote the truth, I wouldn't merely be censored and banned from this website.
I'd wind up in a shallow grave outside of Greenville courtesy of somebody's daddy.
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I'll never understand why someone wasn't tried for treason.
Money, Harry. Money.
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And politics and power, which are the same dual reasons there is no political will to hold Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales et al legally accountable for contravening the Geneva Convention. Contrast the Nixon abuses with the greater human rights abuses of the George W. Bush era and one can see the differing level of systemic response. Values and principles have eroded.
Robert Novak represented everything people don't like in modern journalism. That phoney, meaningless, loud "Crossfire"-style debates, partisanship over objectivity, snark over substance and villianizing those who oppose your views... Why are celebrating his career?
Cest,
Bob Novak is celebrated because Bob Novak had money and friends with money and power. Hence, Bob Novak is being treated as some sort of beacon.
Does that really surprise you?
Wait until Limbaugh dies. Or Dick Cheney.
This is a cla$$ issue. Cla$$ with two dollar signs.
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