Austin Bay Blog

The AP reports that Karl Rove will not be charged with any crime in the Plame/CIA (alleged) leak case.

The lede:

Top White House aide Karl Rove has been told by prosecutors he won’t be charged with any crimes in the investigation into leak of a CIA officer’s identity, his lawyer said Tuesday.

Attorney Robert Luskin said that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald informed him of the decision on Monday, ending months of speculation about the fate of one of President Bush’s closest advisers. Rove testified five times before a grand jury.

 

I. Lewis Libby still faces trial for perjury in the Plame case.

Recall that truthout.org reported on May 13 that Rove’s indictment was a done deal (that Rove’s attorney had been served with an indictment). Numerous websites and political organizations touted the story. Within 48 hours the story fell flat. Truthout kinda/sorta/maybe retracted the story. Here’s the “apology.”  This line from the kinda/sorta apology has become internet slang for passing a fradulent story: “…we erred in getting too far out in front of the news-cycle.” Yup–way out front. Eric Umansky has many more details. Umansky did a superb job dissecting truthout.org’s mistakes. Umansky was thorough and tough. He was even threatened with a law suit by the story’s reporter. Of course the lawsuit never materialized. Eric now regards the threat as a commendation ribbon.

UPDATE: I rarely highlight comments. Comments which meet this site’s comment policy speak for themselves. That noted, the following comment (on this post) caught my eye:

Maybe in the Reality-Based Community Rove will be indicted. It’s just that the RBC is too far in front of reality.

The Community lives in a kind of hyperspatial reality for which fantasy indictments and imagined frog-marches take on a kind of quasi-material state, akin to the ghostly yet somehow seductive images one might see when watching scrambled porn channels on cable after the parents have gone to bed.

Harsh and satirical, but the commenter makes an important point. The truthout.org fiasco is about more than inexcuseably bad journalism– it’s about defrauding the public. It is also, in a curious way, about faith (the commenter’s deeper point). In a free society one can believe what one wants to believe, but emotionally-charged beliefs often (and perhaps inevitably) conflict with reality. Truthout.org wanted the Rove indictment story to be true; rumor became fact– except the rumor wasn’t factual. Folks can want and wish and hope, but their wants and wishes and hopes aren’t facts. Mistakes like these, in this case compounded by the failure to issue a genuine apology and correction, cost reputations. Ask Senator Joe McCarthy. McCarthy’s wild charges got him headlines and enhanced his power; eventually, he had his head handed to him. Truthout.org isn’t in Joe McCarthy’s league of grandstanding liars and rogues (not even close). However, truthout’s actions strike many of us as symptomatic of a new brand of McCarthy-like accusations masked as news– instead of promising the names of hundreds of Communists they reported a devestating indictment of the President’s key political adviser. 

In the news and commentary business mistakes are inevitable–we know this. Commentary (opinion) has greater leeway, because it is presented as opinion. Truthout.org presented its May 13 report as fact. The link is above, but here is the full quote, what truthout alleged happened in a meeting in the law offices of Patton Boggs:

During the course of that meeting, Fitzgerald served attorneys for former Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove with an indictment charging the embattled White House official with perjury and lying to investigators related to his role in the CIA leak case, and instructed one of the attorneys to tell Rove that he has 24 business hours to get his affairs in order, high level sources with direct knowledge of the meeting said Saturday morning.

Properly acknowledging mistakes ultimately enhances credibility. Truthout.org needs to provide a full accounting of what occurred– including source or sources and editorial vetting procedures.