OpinionJournal - The Spitzer Method

His nasty tactics get exposed in Albany: One of the reasons why I think there's an intellectual monoculture among most MSM reporters. This was a big story waiting to be broken, but most papers wouldn't touch it and most reporters wouldn't look into it.

Reporters have an obligation not to be used this way:

"The media are doing their best Claude Rains act over the revelation that the office of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer orchestrated a smear campaign against State Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno. But far from being a unique, out of character event, the episode is a classic example of the Spitzer political method: nasty and exaggerated accusations fed by selective, politically motivated news leaks. The difference is that this time his targets could fight back.

On Monday, the office of Democratic Attorney General Andrew Cuomo released a 54-page report on Mr. Bruno's use of state helicopters, allegedly for personal political purposes. The investigation had been prompted by the Governor's office after Mr. Spitzer's communications aide and hatchet man, Darren Dopp, saw to it that allegations of impropriety against Mr. Bruno had found their way into the hands of gullible, pliant reporters.

Only now it is Mr. Dopp who is in hot water, having been suspended without pay for his role in ginning up a non-scandal about the Republican Majority Leader. The AG cleared Mr. Bruno of any wrongdoing, but in the process uncovered Mr. Dopp's unseemly little scheme to plant the story and then use that as a pretext to call for the investigation."

Of course all the red flags were there for years, for anyone who wanted to see them.