Reason
by Matt Welch

A controversial reporter for one of the nation's leading newspapers stumbles onto what at first looks like a routine Washington story but eventually, after two years of mounting federal inquiry, becomes a wide-reaching scandal that rocks the very foundations of the White House, kneecapping the second presidential term of a big-government Republican hell-bent on expanding executive power. The reporter at the center of it all -- captivated by power, obsessed with high-level access, addicted to anonymous sources -- acts as a pawn in an intragovernmental turf war, becoming in the process a lightning rod for critics of journalistic comportment. I'm talking about New York Times scribe Judith Miller, of course. But the description also applies to The Washington Post's Bob Woodward, the most revered reporter of journalism's most self-adoring generation... (for publication 01/06)

http://www.reason.com/0601/co.mw.from.shtml


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp