Interviewing Novak, Blitzer confirmed Novak's description of him as Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2007 21:23:03 -0400

Interviewing Novak, Blitzer confirmed Novak's description of him as a "soft interviewer"

http://mediamatters.org/items/200707280003

On the July 25 edition of CNN's The Situation Room, host Wolf Blitzer interviewed conservative columnist and former CNN host Robert D. Novak about his new memoir Prince of Darkness: 50 Years Reporting in Washington (Crown Forum, 2007), which Blitzer called "must reading for a lot of young aspiring journalists." But Blitzer -- described by Novak in Prince of Darkness as "a soft interviewer who seldom pressed on-air guests" (Page 604) -- did not challenge Novak to explain key contradictions in his version of events regarding the leak of Valerie Plame's CIA identity.

In particular, Blitzer discussed Novak's relationship with White House senior adviser Karl Rove, and Novak stated that, during the CIA leak investigation, Rove "cut off all relations with me" because of his "legal troubles" and his fear that "he was going to be indicted." As Media Matters for America has noted, Rove was Novak's confirming source for the information that Plame was a CIA operative.

Questions Blitzer could have asked about the Plame case including the following:

Blitzer could also have explored this topic with Novak:

Media Matters has documented several instances in which Blitzer has failed to ask his guests about relevant controversies. In Prince of Darkness, Novak characterized Blitzer as "a soft interviewer," a style he contrasted with the interview Blitzer conducted with him on September 30, 2003. From Pages 603-604:

I had hoped my comments on [the September 29 edition of CNN's] Crossfire would satisfy my CNN obligations, but I was told I also must be interviewed by Wolf Blitzer on his nightly program. Wolf first came to my attention as longtime (1973-89) Washington correspondent for the Jerusalem Post only because he was one of many younger journalists befriended by Rowly Evans. He was occasionally used on CNN as an expert on the Mideast, and was hired by CNN as Pentagon correspondent in 1990. His prominence in covering the 1991 Gulf War propelled him upward at the network. When Wolf came aboard at CNN, I learned that we were brothers in the Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi (he at the State University of New York, Buffalo). We each addressed AEPi's national convention in Washington one year, and we occasionally exchanged the fraternity's secret handshake.

Blitzer was a soft interviewer who seldom pressed on-air guests. Given that background and our personal relationship, I was surprised to hear Blitzer on Monday voice the canard that the White House had shopped the Valerie Plame story around to six journalists before finding one who would swallow it -- me. But I assumed Wolf had just been reading what some harassed CNN staffer had put together hurriedly.

Blitzer on Tuesday evening launched an interrogation of me that was far more confrontational than his handling of big-time politicians. Blitzer took off on my statement that the CIA had informed me that Mrs. Wilson never would have another foreign assignment.

From the July 25 edition of CNN's The Situation Room:

BLITZER: He is known as the Prince of Darkness, conservative and controversial, the political columnist Bob Novak has been covering Washington for half a century. His new book about those 50 years is called, what else, The Prince of Darkness, and the prince, Bob Novak is here in The Situation Room.

Congratulations, Bob, on writing this book.

NOVAK: Thank you very much, Wolf. Thanks for having me back. It's nice to be back at CNN.

BLITZER: It's good to have you back here. And let's talk a little bit about some of your thoughts in the limited amount of time we had -- we have.

[...]

BLITZER: Here's another line from Page 7, Karl Rove: "Karl Rove and I had grown close since he began plotting Bush's path to the White House as early as 1995. In four decades of talking to presidential aides, I never had enjoyed such a good source inside the White House." Even though the president didn't like your thoughts on Iraq, did he stay a good source, Karl Rove, to you?

NOVAK: He did until the Valerie Plame case, when it was developed and, of course, he revealed it that he had been -- I had counted -- I had regarded him as one of my confirming sources. And because of the legal troubles -- he was afraid he was going to be indicted -- he cut off all relations with me.

We're talking again. It is not like it used to be, though.

BLITZER: It's not like the old days.

[...]

BLITZER: I think this book, The Prince of Darkness, is going to be must reading for a lot young aspiring journalists, because you really open up and you really go into your gut, your heart, you tell the stories as you saw them over these 50 years.

Let me read from Page 58, because this will -- for newer journalists, this is going to be, I guess, a lot different than the era that you got involved in: "It would be hard for today's ultra-serious journalists to imagine what fun it was on the campaign circuit then. A poker game most nights and drinking around the clock. Everybody started the morning with a Bloody Mary. Near the end of the trip, when Eastern Airlines ran out of Vodka, reporters nearly rioted. Flight attendants solved the problem by mixing the Blood Marys with gin. Nobody complained."

It was really a different era here in Washington, covering politics in the '50s and the '60s, as it is today.

NOVAK: A lot more booze. A lot more fun. But I'll tell you something, Wolf, in those 50 years I have had a ball. I've been blessed to be able to do this, and I hope people reading the book get some idea of what a joy it's been for me and how great it is to be in America and be a journalist.

BLITZER: Well, that jumps out on virtually every page in the book. The book is entitled The Prince of Darkness: 50 Years Reporting in Washington, Robert D. Novak. Bob, thanks for coming in.

NOVAK: Thank you very much, Wolf.

Contact:
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