MSM: "Actually, I voted for leaks of classified information before I voted against them"

Kind of backwards, but you get the idea.

At Patterico, Dana Priest insists the Framers of the Constitution gave her, and not the government, the right to decide what information it would keep classified.

And, of course, the MSM continues "forgetting" to mention McCarthy's deep partisanship. Remember-- it's only relevant to a story when the partisanship in question leans towards the right.

Goldstein has a big roundup and thoughts, too.

Dan from Riehl World View has a very interesting post indeed. He compares Dana Priest's little-noticed 2002 article about secret CIA prisons and her 2005 Pulitzer-prize winning article about secret CIA prisons and notes that they really aren't that different. So what the hell was such a big deal about her 2005 article that warranted a Pulitzer-- apart from her specifying (practically) which countries the prisons were located in, and thus wounding our allies Poland and Rumania?

Maybe damaging America's national security was the major accomplishment of the article. Maybe that's precisely why she won the Pulitzer to begin with.

Another difference: Priest's 2002 article was fairly objective, even leaning towards a positive assessment of the prisons as necessary, whereas her 2005 re-write of the same story was a screechy "This is not America" bit of terrorist-friendly Al Jazeera bait.

Again, the facts don't really matter. It's the attitude, the tone, the narrative, the "storytelling." Priest basically wrote the same article twice -- once, basically harmless to America's security interests and not particularly damaging to Bush on a political level, the second time, compromising two key allies and savaging Bush -- and yet only seems to have been granted any accolades for the second article.

posted by Ace at 03:58 PM

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