Libby and the Washington press

I've covered too many trials, including some quite closely, to be foolish enough to make any predictions as to how the Scooter Libby jury will come down. But it is fairly safe to predict the relations between politicians and press in the Imperial City will change in a number of ways as a result of this trial.

The cozy "off the record" briefings and chats are bound to be a bit different, in that journalists will no longer be able to say with as much credibility as before that they will never reveal the name of a source. The government showed with Judith Miller that it's willing to play hardball in such cases (and in a case that in terms of national security was really quite inconsequential; the underlying crime of revealing the identity of a covert CIA operative has still not been charged on anyone).

There will be positive and negative effects. Using unidentified sources is one of the besetting sins of the Washington press corps. Sometimes it means readers can find out things they might not have known otherwise, but often enough anonymity is granted for trivial reasons. All too often using anonymous sources and getting cozy with them is a subsititute for good reporting rather than a supplement to it.

The relations won't be so cozy for a good long while.