News coverage speculating on the expected completion of Robert Mueller’s special counsel report has turned particularly feverish, Columbia Journalism Review reports in a link-filled roundup of the non-news. Is actual news afoot or are we witnessing “the bored angst of journalists”?
In the report’s absence, reporters on the Mueller beat have been busy intoning “any time now” and interpreting signs. Andrew Weissmann, a top prosecutor for Mueller, is stepping down. Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general who was stepping down, is now staying a bit longer. Staff are carrying boxes out of the special counsel’s office. What does any of it mean? Once actual news does break, major news outlets are ready to move. According to Vanity Fair’s Joe Pompeo, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal already have stories, B-roll, interactives, and graphics “in the oven,” and news trucks have been camped outside the Justice Department, the home of William Barr, the attorney general, and other places. Yesterday, photographers dutifully snapped pictures of Mueller driving to his office before dawn. All the triangulating of clues, real or imagined, stems from the Mueller investigation’s unusual degree of success at preventing leaks. For all the guessing, however, “the clearest truth we have is that the report will not be the end of the Mueller story,” CJR safely concludes.