The embargo spouts a financial leak

Slate magazine has made a tradition of publishing the exit poll data despite the supposed moratorium on such data while polls are open. And here's another example of the kind of Big Media inconsistency they have in mind when they justify the policy. If you go to the Wall Street Journal today looking for exit poll data, you won't find it. BUT, if you to the markets report update, you find (subs. req'd):

The first whiff of election results, however premature, knocked stocks from their perch Tuesday, wiping out a day of surprising gains that had carried the Nasdaq Composite Index above 2000 points for the first time in four months.

"This was an election-driven day. No earnings reports. No economic data," said Brian Bush [we're assuming no relation], director of research at Stephens Inc. in Little Rock, Ark. He said the Web site Drudge Report posted some form of exit-poll data in two battleground states -- Ohio and Pennsylvania -- that indicated Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic challenger, was doing better than President Bush.

"The market reacted very negatively to that," Mr. Bush said. "Many of us observed the market seemed to be predicting a Bush victory." After the early polling numbers turned up on a number of Web sites and online blogs, the stock market stumbled and the losses snowballed all the way to the closing bell.

So when the supposedly illicit data is now itself generating news, the quandary only deepens.