Diogenes, Bravely Exposing The Ugly Truth About... Story Length

Late Tuesday night, I sent an email to ombudsman Deborah Howell pointing out that in their Libby trial coverage, Amy Goldstein and Carol Leonnig had repeatedly misrepresented the outcome of Joe Wilson's trip to Niger, including in this March 7 story:

Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, publicly accused the White House of using flawed intelligence to justify the war and cited a CIA mission he took to Niger in 2002, which found no merit to claims that Iraq was trying to buy weapons-grade uranium.

This narrative having been debunked by the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, a fact once acknowledged by Susan Schmidt's reporting on July 10, 2004  and twice since September 2006 by the Post's editorial page. I have not received a response and do not particularly expect one. Today's column by Howell tackles the bitter public controversy over whether stories should be short or long:

How long should a newspaper story be? Long enough to tell readers what they want to know, short enough not to waste their time and thorough enough not to leave them wanting.

Raise that lamp high, Ms. Howell. 

For anyone inexplicably curious about one of the central claims of the Iraq war and its role in domestic politics, here's the center of Schmidt's story:

The [Senate] panel found that Wilson's report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts....   

The report turns a harsh spotlight on what Wilson has said about his role in gathering prewar intelligence, most pointedly by asserting that his wife, CIA employee Valerie Plame, recommended him....

Wilson's reports to the CIA added to the evidence that Iraq may have tried to buy uranium in Niger, although officials at the State Department remained highly skeptical, the report said.   

Wilson said that a former prime minister of Niger, Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, was unaware of any sales contract with Iraq, but said that in June 1999 a businessman approached him, insisting that he meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss "expanding commercial relations" between Niger and Iraq -- which Mayaki interpreted to mean they wanted to discuss yellowcake sales. A report CIA officials drafted after debriefing Wilson said that "although the meeting took place, Mayaki let the matter drop due to UN sanctions on Iraq."   

And here's a recap of the Post's repeated misrepresentations:

• Carol Leonnig and Amy Goldstein, March 7: Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, publicly accused the White House of using flawed intelligence to justify the war and cited a CIA mission he took to Niger in 2002, which found no merit to claims that Iraq was trying to buy weapons-grade uranium.
• Carol Leonnig and Amy Goldstein, Feb. 8: Prosecutors spent three years investigating whether senior Bush administration officials deliberately revealed Plame's status to punish her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. The CIA had sent him to Africa in 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq had been trying to buy nuclear material there. Wilson found no evidence of the activity...
• Almost every other Leonnig/Goldstein story in which the dynamic duo reports Wilson "concluded" there was no evidence, a construction a lawyer could love.
• Howard Kurtz, July 12, 2006: Novak triggered one of the capital's most tangled investigations with a July 2003 column reporting that Plame had suggested sending her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, to Niger to investigate whether Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was trying to obtain nuclear material from that country -- an unsupported claim that was included in President Bush's State of the Union speech.
• Eric Weiss and Charles Lane, July 14, 2006: Wilson had been sent by the CIA to investigate whether Iraq had sought nuclear weapons material from Niger. He reported that the charge could not be proved, but Bush nevertheless asserted in his 2003 State of the Union address that intelligence existed that Iraq had tried to buy uranium in Africa.
• Daniela Deane, July 15, 2006: Wilson said yesterday that he told the administration repeatedly that, after two missions to Niger to investigate, he had "found no evidence" that former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was attempting to buy yellowcake uranium in Niger for nuclear weapons.

Well, repeatedly ignoring evidence to the contrary that was once reported in your own news pages is one thing.  But the increasingly ugly and bizarre attacks on the Washington Post's story length are quite another, as Howell illustrates:

While readers seldom write to complain about story length, the subject is endlessly debated in The Post's newsroom.

Oh.

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