Sophistry 101

Media Blog on National Review Online: "Speaking for the Defense
05/01 11:42 AM - The Markup

As regards the firing of CIA official Mary McCarthy, the Washington Post is in the same untenable position that the New York Times was in during the Judith Miller episode � the editors know something they're not telling, but they go on reporting the story as if they don't know. One undisputed point is that McCarthy had unauthorized contacts with reporters � including, according the CIA, the Washington Post's Dana Priest. But Priest won't confirm or deny that, and she certainly won't talk about what information McCarthy might have given her. The fact that the Post has this information but won't reveal it opens a lot of questions about its reporting on the story � specifically, the tendency of all it's articles about McCarthy to sympathetically portray her as the victim of a CIA witch hunt.