Media Double Standard on Leaks

We’re slow discussing this, but now that the Justice Department has announced it is investigate the leak that revealed NSA spying on terrorist suspects, it bears repeating.

From McBride’s Media Matters, a discussion of the double standard of the media.

The media have obsessed for months over the “leak” of the identity of a supposedly covert CIA agent, Valerie Plame - even though a federal prosecutor did not end up filing charges for leaking her identity.

But someone leaks secret National Security Agency intercepts, endangering our national security, and the media could care less.

And no one seems to be clamoring for a federal prosecutor to investigate the leaker.

Where is the media outrage?

The answer is self apparent. The media take umbrage at leaks only when the leakers are in the Bush administration and the person being leaked about is tied to an Iraq war critic.

But when the leakers are targeting the Bush administration, and the leakers are probably Iraq war critics themselves, the media focus on the information that was leaked, to the exclusion of the leak itself.