I don't think they can. Woodward did not just cross a subtle line. Looking at his quotes on the subject it is clear that he grossly neglected his obligations as a journalist.

I'm surprised that anyone still trusted Woodward after his fawning portrait of Bush as president in command. That book sort of defined Woodward as a boot licker in my mind, and boot lickers just don't get my trust.

Woodward: "This [Fitzgerald] investigation that's been going on for two years is just running like a chain saw right through the lifeline that reporters have to sources who will tell you the truth, what's really going on."

Y'know what, Bob?  I've got a simple rule for you, on this business of confidentiality of sources.  (And all you other Beltway reporters are welcome to listen in too.) I think this will help you sort out all this nonsense that has you so helplessly confused, an incredible third of a century after you and Carl Bernstein were put on the Watergate story.

When a source asks to go on background - that is, when you can report what he says, but not who he is - ask yourself this: is his boss, or his boss's boss, and so forth, going to be mad when he sees these words in the paper?  Is this guy going to be in trouble, maybe even lose his job, if I were to name my source?  Or are his employers perfectly happy to see these words make it into the news, but they simply want to blur the fingerprints a bit?

I'm not a reporter; far from it.  And I may not understand some of the dilemmas imposed by your profession.  But you know what?  I bet this will give you a pretty good clue, the vast majority of the time, about whether you ought to be giving a source the protection of confidentiality.

Because if his bosses are happy that he's saying what he's saying, then there's no need for him to be saying it on background.  Maybe he, and they, are just using you.  Just a hunch, Bob. And all you and your buddies are doing is carrying their water, doing stenography for them as they write anonymous letters to the public.

This is especially obvious in its truth when you aren't meeting with the source in some quiet corner, but rather in a meeting room or auditorium with half the Beltway press corps present, and copies of prepared remarks being handed out.  If it's no secret to the whole damned press corps who the "senior Administration official" is, then what's the justification for keeping the rest of the country in the dark, other than to feel like you're 'in the know,' as they used to say in my dad's time?  You aren't getting at the truth; you're doing a favor to a big-shot.

And one final hint on an unrelated matter: if a well-placed source tells you something "in an offhand, casual manner," as if it was "almost gossip," you might not "attach any great significance to it," but he might.  After one-third of a century in the game, how is it that you're this easily played?

What did you cover at the Saigon bureau, Roland?  Sports?

Woodward must be fired, period.

What I'm beginning to love about Plame-mania, painful as it is, is that it reveals just how many people -- some of who have been anonymous sources themselves -- think reporters should break promises to sources.
Woodward made a promise. He kept the promise. We still don't know who is source is. 
Yay for Bob.
 

Woodward's fatal flaw is not that he concealed a source; sources need to know that reporters will protect them (although RT has a point about being used).

Woodward was dishonest in not telling his superior of his agreement with the source--that smacks of self-serving dishonesty. But worse was his appearing all over TV trying to downplay the Plame scandal without revealing his role. That was inexcusbale, self-serving, and dishonest.

Woodward has no credibility left. He is in it for the money. He says in today's Washington Post: "I was trying to protect my sources. That's Job No. 1 in a case like this..."

Really? I thought protecting ones sources was a means to the real goal of reporters in a democracy: Uncovering the truth. Of course if your sources have become your career, then Job 1 is keeping access to high placed sources, even if they are lying and you know it. 

I vividly remember a Woodward interview on PBS with Sally Quinn. It was at the height of Monica Madness. Woodward criticized the Clintons for (get this!) not hiring Sally Quinn as director of social events or social secretary or  some such thing. He and Sally went on and on about the Clintons poor judgment. I was shocked. They could have criticized Clinton for Bosnia policy or some other substantive issue but they chose something petty.

I realized then that IT IS ALL ABOUT THEM!

I love Didion.  But I don't this she nailed Woodward here.  I think Woodward is a thoughtful guy, a dogged reporter and, alas, a horrible writer.  I don't think it's that he misses complexities about motivations and the human psyche so much as he just writes them rather badly.

He ceased to operate as a journalist the minute he went on National TV to shape public opinion about the true meaning of the outing of Valerie Plame. He played down the damage to our intelligence assets, he played down the Machiavellian conspiracy angle, he did everything he could to suggest and persuade that this investigation was a tempest in a teapot.

 We now know he had a personal stake in the outcome of the investigation. He has personally mislead the public, his employer, and his colleagues. He crossed the line--deliberately, and betrayed everyone but his source in the process.

 This is what I would call a rotten, no good, son of a bitch. We now know who he REALLY is. We now have a measure of his actual character, independent of his myth, the public Legend.

He has been bought and sold. He is what Phillip K Dick would have called, a "Yance" man, part of the ruling elite that keeps the wool pulled over the eyes of the great unwashed masses, in the service of the rich and powerful.

It's truly disgusting. 

Woodward's kind of like the Brett Favre of journalists: definitely an all-time great who still has a hell of a cannon, but he's prone to throwing more INT than TD these days.

We love him for his past greatness, which has sadly faded to the point where he should've retired when he was on top.

.

A match made in heaven.

Kudos to Joan Didion. A rather prescient, no-hold bared, indictment against Woodward.

Woodward came to speak last year, promoting his latest book.  He said, outright, that he had information that the intelligence in the run up to the war may not have been as solid as the Administration was purporting.  He said he'd thought of running the story, but that "all hell would have rained down on him."  And in the context of the election, the Post decided not to run it.  When I asked him what exactly he meant by "all hell raining down on him" and from "whom," he hemmed and hawed about how it's hard to be a journalist.  When a colleague asked him a follow up question about whether he would've had the same reaction 30 years ago, he all but said "things change."

And then they split -- and Bernstein has done quite interesting work....

But tonight Carl says: quit piling on Bob.

In High School I read All the President's Men. Three years ago I re-read the book and was once again impressed with the incredible amount of work that went into the investigation Woodward and Bernstein conducted. It not only described an incredible story, but laid out a picture of how the structures of power and influence leaned on each other in late '60s-early '70s Washington, D.C.

Enjoying the book so much, I went out and picked up The Commanders and then Plan of Attack. I was let down twice.

Woodward will always have his role as a player in one of the most important investigations in journalistic history. Yet his later work exhibited none of the detailed, in-depth, stinking-of-shoe-leather investigation that stood out in his and Bernsteins early work.

Woodward found his niche as a society writer in a publicity-seeking community stuck in a policy-oriented town.

He steps right over the body in order to secure the interview with the killer.

"Woodward made a promise. He kept the promise. We still don't know who is source is. "

I disagree.  Leaking the name of a CIA agent is a crime.  When a reporter is the recipient of that information, he is no longer a journalist with a source, he is a witness to a crime. 

The smorgasbord of GOP scandals will bring down the party, with the Plame scandal, they can take the media with it.  Good riddance.