Mirror, Mirror

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I think that, far from being an absurd hall of mirrors or a plague on the profession, the Libby trial is serving a useful purpose for journalists and their audience. Yes, it is complicated (another feature that is often bemoaned), but its complexity mirrors the world in which Washington journalists ply their trade. It's well known that this is often a rough place, a federation of users. But seldom does the public get to see precisely how it works, and why.

The popular view of the media is rooted in hackneyed stereotypes. Journalists are either saintly heroes (Murrow, Cronkite) or conniving villains (take your pick of recent plagiarists and fabulists). In reality, they're neither. Or rather, they're both and everything in between.

Like people in any trade, media types choose their calling for all kinds of reasons, some of them quite high-minded. And as in all professions, they wind up discovering that the work is more tangled and morally ambiguous than they had ever imagined. To thrive, you have to play angles and push envelopes. Trickiest of all, you have to cultivate relationships with powerful people who have the information you need to do your work, which is to get the story. When you yourself are powerful—as many Washington journalists are—and can produce something your sources need (say, a piece that gets their "message" out), there's an implied barter, and the opportunities for corruption multiply.

It's a high-stakes game. In the Libby trial, we have a living tableau of a bunch of people who were playing it together, against the backdrop of war. Nobody comes off especially well: The war was based on bad information and everyone in the news establishment got taken for a ride. And this is part of the story of how it happened. This is Washington, not as some screenwriter or scolding ethicist would have it, but as it really is. Transparency like this doesn't come along very often. Enjoy it while it lasts.

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