The Promise Keepers
The Plame scandal had about as much heft as the Rather scandal, but it happened last summer and would be forgotten by now if not for the special prosecutor who’s supposedly turning over every rock in Washington to get to the bottom of Novak’s expose. We’re reminded of his probe whenever a judge rejects the privilege claim of some subpoenaed reporter who possibly heard from the same source and orders him or her to appear before the grand jury. It’s not clear whether Novak himself has been subpoenaed–on the advice of counsel, he’s not talking.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
After the conference Thorson and I exchanged e-mails, and she told me the conditions under which protecting a source trumps transparency. “First, you have to have created credibility and trust via previous transparency; otherwise no one will believe you anyway, anonymous source or not! And second you’d better be real sure that you are really having to protect your sources from danger–not just being lazy or overhyping your and your source’s importance!”
This first principle is taught at Columbia, Missouri, and finer journalism schools everywhere. As stated by Dalglish, it gleams with virtue. But the gleam diminished as Dalglish continued. Journalists “need to be perceived and regarded as being independent sources of information. If they are viewed or in fact become agents of the government, agents of the defense counsel, agents of civil litigants and participants in the legal process, their ability to react independently will be greatly damaged.” But Novak is being viewed as an agent–make that tool–of the government, or at least of a couple of White House henchmen. His silence protects them.
I called Zion, read Dorfman’s letter to him, and asked him to comment. “If this happened in New York they couldn’t get away with this crap,” he said. “Maybe Chicago too. I can’t imagine the great reporters in the whole history of Chicago would just sit there and do nothing. All I can say is there’s sort of a protective society in Washington. It befuddles me. Maybe they’re afraid if they broke who the source was they’d be in front of a court [asking], ‘Tell me who your source is.’”
Statistics Don’t Lie . . . or Do They?
At one point I would have agreed. But that was before Ron Rapoport at the Sun-Times put me on to a story in the September 26 Seattle Times. Baseball reporter Larry Stone had gone straight to the source–the Elias Sports Bureau, official statistician of Major League Baseball. “One hundred and fifty-four games has no official meaning,” executive vice president Steve Hirdt told Stone. “It’s an advance in civilization made from 1961 until now–cell phones, computers, and there’s no longer rigid insistence on breaking records in 154 games.”
