Yeah, maybe that was a bit hasty

Josh Marshall is right that Novak did the damage in outing the CIA front the moment he published his July story. I had considered that that was the case- but it doesn't make Novak's behavior substantively much better. It's clear that Novak was taking political potshots at someone he had already been involved in harming. That's a jerk thing to do.

A lot of bloggers and commenters have suggested that Novak did nothing wrong by writing that column. I disagree. I am not a journalist nor was I ever a journalism student, but what Novak did was either stupid or unethical. Stupid if he, as a very old hand in Washington, failed to see the harm in outing a CIA operative (his words in that July 14 column, despite his later protestations that she was merely an analyst). And unethical if he knew what he was doing. To say that he was doing a journalistic duty is bizarre. Does that somehow mean the 5 (or is it 6? pardon my innumeracy) other journalists who received the leak didn't do their duty? You don't have a professional obligation to print everything a source tells you- nor, as this case demonstrates, is there a moral reason why you have to write the "whole truth" in all cases. If the potential harm of writing something far outways its potential good, don't do it.