Journalist Michael Wolff argues in a Vanity Fair article that the NYT and Time had a duty to expose key Dubya aide Karl Rove last year over his machinations on the Valerie Plame file -- you know, back before the election.

Wolff debates the issue with investigative journo Murray Waas on Democracy Now!

An excerpt:

AMY GOODMAN: We take up a piece in the latest issue of Vanity Fair magazine. Columnist Michael Wolff, criticizes those in the mainstream media, particularly Time magazine and The New York Times, who knew of Karl Rove's role in the outing of Valerie Plame but refused to expose him. In the article, entitled, "All Roads Lead to Rove," Wolff writes, "If the news media had revealed Rove was their source, (quote), it might reasonably have presaged the defeat of the President, might have even, to be slightly melodramatic, altered the course of the war in Iraq." Michael Wolff joins us in our firehouse studio; investigative reporter, Murray Waas remains with us on the line. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Michael.

MICHAEL WOLFF: Thanks for having me.

AMY GOODMAN: Why don't you lay out your thesis in “All Roads Lead to Rove”?

MICHAEL WOLFF: Well, you just did a very good job of laying it out. It's really a very simple thesis. It's this confounding issue that the national press, I mean, some of the greatest news organizations in the country, had this really big story, a major story, a story that, as you just quoted me, could well have affected the course of the election of this administration, and they didn't print it. And they didn't print it -- they didn't print it because there's, I think -- I think it goes to a lot of reasons. It goes to how reporters get along and act in Washington. Essentially, if you have a big source, you don't want to blow your source. And this has become this kind of -- this discussion about whether reporters should testify or not. And the issue has become what's the relationship of the media to government. And when I sat down and looked at this, I said, ‘Wait a minute, holy cow. Maybe the question is much more basic. What's the relationship -- what's the responsibility of the reporter to the reader?’ And you know, I have been a reporter all my life, so I know the issues of a source. But to be perfectly honest, that's a business transaction between a reporter and his business connections, let's call them. And as a reader, I don't care about that. What I care about is if you have the news. Let me know what it is.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Your article also suggests that Karl Rove was the ultimate source in Washington, to a large degree, and that he became this off-the-record source for so many reporters that, in essence, he was managing those reporters, to a large degree.

MICHAEL WOLFF: Well, I mean, I think the truth is we don't know that, but what we do know is that we have reason to believe that if he was talking to these people, he was probably talking to lots of other people, too. One of the interesting things is that the Bush administration, I mean, since the beginning, there has always been this thing that they don't leak, that they're incredibly secret, that, you know, that finally there's a disciplined administration, an administration with media discipline. And what it probably turns out now is that that's not true. They just didn't leak -- they didn't leak willy-nilly. They leaked with a strategy and a method and with Karl Rove sitting right up at the top of that media war room.