Tim Grieve on yesterday’s L.A. Times story on the Plame case:

The answer, at least in part: Their roles remained secret because some members of the mainstream press helped to keep them secret. According to the Times’ report, Time magazine’s Matthew Cooper chose not to ask for a waiver of confidentiality from Rove until this summer — in part because his attorney advised against it, and in part because “Time editors were concerned about becoming part of such an explosive story in an election year.” As a result, the Times says, “Cooper’s testimony was delayed nearly a year, well after Bush’s reelection.”

Translated, as John Aravosis explains at AMERICAblog today, that means that Time’s editors didn’t want Cooper to reveal information that could be damaging to Bush’s re-elections hopes until after the election was over. “It’s one thing for Time to do its job and ignore the effects of its reporting and overall work on US elections,” Aravosis writes. “It’s quite another for Time to make decisions based on whether they’ll influence US elections.”

In a way, it may be even worse than that. By not seeking a waiver from Rove — by not reporting what its reporter knew to be true — Time allowed Americans to go the polls believing that which the magazine knew to be false. Until Time turned over Matthew Cooper’s email messages to Patrick Fitzgerald this July, the White House was free to proclaim — as it did, repeatedly and vociferously — that Karl Rove had nothing whatsoever to do with the outing of Valerie Plame. That’s the false story Americans had been told when they cast their votes for the presidency in November. Time knew better but didn’t say.

I don’t know why anyone who’s been paying attention would be even the slightest bit surprised like this. It’s completely consistent with the media’s unwritten motto: Comfort the comfortable. Their job is to serve the interests of the corporations who own them.

This is why, generally speaking, national media coverage is shot full of holes. Journalists - even the bad ones - have at least a thin veneer of self-respect. They will go through the motions of covering a story, albeit with a specific, corporate-friendly slant. That doesn’t make it impossible to read between the lines, as savvy readers learn to do.

It’s what they leave out that’s the problem, and Plamegate is a perfect example. It’s rarely accomplished by any overt command - it’s always a “funding issue,” a “staffing problem,” a matter of “priorities.” And after a while, journalists don’t even have to be told. They’ve learned to censor themselves.

Just getting by, don’t you know. Don’t start with that “mission” stuff or snide comments about owing certain obligations in exchange for constitutional protections. It’s all about them, and their Beltway-New York-Nantucket comfort zone.