SCOTUS

Howard Kurtz picks up yesterday’s question thrown out by NPR’s Don Gonyea‘s report on the Edith Clement rumors.

“Did the Bush team put out misinformation on that crazy Tuesday to steer reporters away from John Roberts? We can’t answer the question definitively because the journalists involved have a Matt Cooper problem — they promised their sources anonymity, regardless of motive. But I can tell you that some of them are ticked and feeling misled,” Kurtz writes.

Leftist bloggers are hopping mad over this, which they see as just the latest in the Rovian manipulations of the Washington press corps. Atrios writes, “I really missed the memo when we were told that journalists who promised confidentiality to their sources were obligated to maintain that confidentiality even after learning that they’d been lied to. This isn’t about keeping promises, it’s about maintaining access and shame on all of them for pretending otherwise.”

Like Atrios, we’ll make the same deal we’ve made in the past: Anyone who wishes to out an anonymice source, email us confidentially or use the tip box.

Who was the Edith Clement source?

Lots of people are having fun with the with the commonness of the name John Roberts, which, in addition to the President’s latest Supreme Court nominee and CBS’ White House correspondent/stand-in anchor (left), is the moniker for a whole bunch of people, reports today’s Washington Post.

The CBS version of the name, meanwhile, wrote a little commentary on the shared name:

“It was a bit of an ‘Alice In Wonderland’ moment last night, watching President Bush in the State Dining Room lauding the accomplishments and character of one ‘John Roberts.’ After my four and a half years covering the Bush White House, I couldn’t imagine the name ‘John Roberts’ and the phrase ‘widely admired for his intellect, his sound judgment and his personal decency’ being used in the same time zone, let alone the same sentence.”

CBS’ Roberts expects that he’ll get some extra special treatment on the phone when he calls the White House–at least until they realize it’s not the judge calling.

Frankly, it’s not the anchor chair of the CBS Evening News, but John Roberts should be pretty happy with his nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Brian at our cousin TVNewser has some details on the coverage.

And, for the record, the CBS version of Roberts made one reference to the fact that he shared a name with the nominee. During the West Coast evening news, just 30 minutes before the President’s speech, CBS’ Roberts announced the name and said, “no relation to this correspondent.”

While we imagine that the story will quickly turn to the bloodbath about to ensue, NPR’s Don Gonyea offers some tantalizing clues about how the nomination happened–including the fact that the day-long rumors about Edith Clement were fueled by a “confidential but persuasive” source.

Who was the source and what was his or her motive? Did the press corps get intentionally misdirected by a White House smokescreen? Did the press promise confidentiality to someone who lied to them?

Given all of the attention to leaks and sourcing in recent weeks, some enterprising reporter should follow this story up today.