What's The News Media's Responsibility in The Wilson/Plame Matter?

Wrting in the Village Voice, Sidney Schanberg (no right-wing apologist, he) argues that the reporters involved should come forward and tell us the story of their own roles in the story: "[T]hey don't have to name their sources. Just be reporters. The public has a right to know; isn't that our mantra?"

Sounds good to me. For the past eight weeks or so, the backstory that has been percolating is that the news media types directly involved in the story (Judith Miller of the New York Times, Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, Tim Russert, et al.) are very uncomfortable because of their role in the matter. Many have suggested that some of them might actually have been the source that revealed Valerie Plame's CIA position. Yet the silence from all of them on that score has been deafening. It's well past time for that silence to be broken.