Once again, you gotta love the people who think they’re honoring grand jury secrecy because they leak their information anonymously.

I mean, that pretty much gets to the heart of the problem, doesn’t it? That as long as you don’t get caught, you’re blameless? That, and the rather narcissistic notion that somehow it’s not the information they’re protecting with those laws — no, they’re just jealous that the leaker might get credit for the info.

What a cesspool.

This is one of those instances when, as an ex-journalist, I’d like to believe that a diligent reporter went looking for a source in the Administration, found one, tied what the source said to previously known material, then reported it in a nuanced way.

But it’s obvious that it wasn’t a reporter who ferreted out the source but rather the source who approached the reporters.

Now that’s not always a bad thing. It’s what whistleblowers do – Daniel Ellsberg still being a prime example. No reporter was looking for him; it was the other way around. However, when the anonymous source is someone who works for an organization – corporate or governmental – and provides information that supports the contentions of someone else who works for that organization who is under fire, well, how many synapses does it take for a reporter’s bullshit antennae to go on full alert?

Given what’s happened repeatedly during the Bush Administration, a good reporter ought to add a disclaimer in any story that relies exclusively on a single anonymous source; to wit: â€Readers should buy into the â€revelations†of an anonymous source with extreme caution as the source’s agenda is unknown and may be disinformational in nature.†Readers should, of course, ALWAYS do that, whether or not the source is anonymous.

Right now, with the feeding frenzy on, reporters are going to feel incredible pressure to find any little tidbit in order to be first to report something â€new†in the Rove/Plame case. So we can probably expect to see more of this. One wonders if Mr. Fitzgerald will be subpoenaing reporters from the WaPo, NYT and AP to find out who leaked this information in contravention of his command that they keep their traps shut.

Many – though not enough – media outlets already have ethics guidelines governing, among other things, use of anonymous sources. My old stomping grounds, The Los Angeles Times, just got around to issuing its guidelines after a year’s worth of internal wrangling.

For many of us who have worked as investigative reporters, the guidelines’ take on anonymous sources seems mostly like commonsense. That a newspaper of such high visibility and reputation must actually explain to its reporters how they should handle sources (and deal with other ethical situations) speaks volumes about the state of the journalistic profession.

Of anonymous sources, the guidelines say:

Sources

We report in environments – Hollywood and Washington, to name two – where
anonymity is routinely sought and casually granted. We stand against that practice and
seek to minimize it. We are committed to informing readers as completely as possible;
the use of anonymous sources compromises this important value.

These standards are not intended to discourage reporters from cultivating sources who are wary of publicity. Such informants can be invaluable. But the information they
provide can often be verified with sources willing to be named, from documents, or both.
We should make every effort to obtain such verification. Relying in print on unnamed
sources should be a last resort, subject to the following guidelines:

When we use anonymous sources, it should be to convey important information to
our readers. We should not use such sources to publish material that is trivial, obvious or
self-serving.

Sources should never be permitted to use the shield of anonymity to voice
speculation or to make ad hominem attacks.

An unnamed source should have a compelling reason for insisting on anonymity,
such as fear of retaliation, and stories should state those reasons when they are relevant.

The reporter and editor must be satisfied that the source has a sound factual basis for
his or her assertions. Some sources quoted anonymously might tend to exaggerate or
overreach precisely because they will not be named.

Stories should identify sources as completely as possible consistent with the promise
of anonymity. In particular, a source’s point of view and potential biases should be
disclosed as fully as possible. For instance, “an advisor to Democratic members of the
House Foreign Affairs Committee†is preferable to “a Congressional source.â€

When practical, a reporter should consult an editor before entering into an agreement to protect a source’s anonymity. In some cases, an editor may insist on knowing the
source’s identity in order to evaluate the reliability of the information provided.
In rare instances, sources may insist that the paper and the reporter resist subpoenas
and judicial orders, if necessary, to protect their anonymity. Reporters should consult a
masthead editor before entering into any such agreement.

Even in the absence of such an agreement, the possibility exists that a prosecutor,
grand jury or judge will demand to know a source’s identity, forcing the reporter to
choose between unmasking the source and going to jail for contempt of court. Such
situations are rare, and they should not deter us from investigating sensitive or
contentious matters.

Reporters should be extremely circumspect about how and where they store
information that might identify an anonymous source. Many electronic records, including
e-mail, can be subpoenaed from and retrieved by non-newsroom employees.
Promises to a source must be kept except under the most extraordinary
circumstances. If a source, acting in bad faith, were to succeed in using the newspaper to
spread misinformation, we would consider our promise of anonymity no longer binding.
That said, we do not “burn†sources.

[This post is a bit of a test. If your computer’s operating system can’t read Chinese, you won’t see the Chinese portion correctly.]

å­è²¢å•æ›°:「有一言而å¯ä»¥çµ‚身行之者乎?ã€
å­æ›°:「其æ•ä¹Ž?己所ä¸æ¬²,勿施於人.ã€

Zigong asked, â€Is there a single word which one could act on all one’s life?â€
The Master said, â€Wouldn’t it be shù [æ•] (likening-to-oneself)? What you do not yourself desire do not do to others.â€

From the Confucian Analects, 15.24 (A.C. Graham, transl. in Disputers of the Tao, p. 20.)

It strikes me that Rove is paying the price for not adhering to this maxim (the Chinese version of the Golden Rule, which is slightly different and more astute politically than the Western version, if you ask me). After all, Confucius was a political advisor/consultant.

So I would dispute the idea that what is happening here is that Democrats are learning to play Rove’s amoral game. It’s more that the house rules are beginning to be enforced.

This is tangentially related, so bear with me.

Why can’t Novak have two completely different sources, say Hannah or Libby as the political person, and Rice or Powell as the non-partisan official?  In other words, is Rove directly involved in the production of Novak’s story as one of the two sources?

One would think that anyone in the Iraq Working Group might well have known Plame’s identity.  Especially if Wilson is write that they had a meeting and decided to do a workup on him — that workup in istelf would not necessarily be against the law.

Rove in saying â€I’ve heard that too†if those were his exact words did not say HOW he had heard that, and thus it is not per se a denial of KNOWING  ..  it does not even address the question of if he KNEW, and gives him deniability to the charge that he told —  the statement is so vague that IF you believe it, by itself there is probably no criminal liability.

The followup phone calls once Novak’s article had been published, however, are a clear violation of the law.  Rove may not have realized that.  If in fact he did call Matthews and Mtichell and tell the former that Plame was now fair game, then he would seem to believe that since her name was published no secrecy needed to be continued.  But that is NOT how the law reads, and that act by itself is a clear violation of the espionage act, serves as a confirmation of Plame’s identity, and may well violate the IIPA, particularly subsection (b).  

I think our focus may be wrong.  I think Fitzgerald can legally nail Rove for the phone calls AFTER Novak’s column appeared.

My last comment refers to the Pincus-Allen article. The link is
http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..e=printer.

When I first heard about this story, my first reaction was, it’s utter bullshit if it’s Luskin and they gave him anonymity. My second reaction was, I wonder what MB will have to say?

What most people don’t grasp is that Luskin is an ADMINISTRATION SOURCE – he is the lawyer for a top Administration official, he’s not some pundit randomly spouting off. I don’t see how the media can let the WH get away with saying their official policy is not to comment, but then they grant WH officials anonymity so they can comment without appearing to break their own rule. It’s totally ridiculous.

I feel for the guy, but I sure don’t feel for the media that insists on giving the public a completely false impression that the Administration is hiding behind a principled refusal to comment.

If someone tells the world that they’re not going to comment, but then they tell the media that they’ll give them a story as long as they’re sourced anonymously, the response should be a big â€fuck you.†Letting anonymous source protection serve as a license to commit partisan smears is how we got in this whole mess in the first place.

Here are the recommendations recently made to the NYT on the use of anonymous sources:

Reporters must be more aggressive in pressing sources to put information and quotations on the record, especially sources who strongly desire to get their viewpoint into the paper.
Editors must be more energetic in pressing reporters to get that information on the record. They must also recognize that persuading reticent sources to put their names behind sensitive disclosures is not easy; it may slow the reporting.

When anonymity is unavoidable, reporters and editors must be more diligent in describing sources more fully. The basics include how the anonymous sources know what they know, why they are willing to provide the information and why they are entitled to anonymity.

And in Keller’s response to the report.

We resist granting anonymity for opinion, speculation or personal attacks.

[snip]

when anonymity is unavoidable editors must press for adequate disclosure — how the sources know what they know, what motivated them to share the information, and why they are entitled to anonymity. (Note: Not why they ASK for anonymity, but why we feel they are entitled to it.)

I wonder how deeply Mr. Johnston and Mr. Stevenson considered the motive of the person who leaked this information on Rove. And I wonder why it wasn’t included in this story.

here’s another story I missed from Froomkin:

And there’s another possible blockbuster story this morning from Thomas M. DeFrank and Kenneth R. Bazinet , who write in the New York Daily News: â€The special prosecutor probing the outing of a CIA spy is looking beyond who leaked Valerie Plame’s identity, seeking whether White House aides tried to cover their tracks after her name went public, sources told the Daily News.

â€Along with Bush political guru Karl Rove, the grand jury is investigating what role, if any, ex-White House mouthpiece Ari Fleischer may have played in the revelation that the former covert operative Plame was married to former Ambassador Joe Wilson. . . .

â€A State Department memo that included background on Wilson — and who in the White House had access to it — appears to be a key to revealing who gave conservative columnist Robert Novak Plame’s name, [two] sources said.â€

Here’s an observation about the Karl Rove leaks this morning. The AP definitely got one of the leaks. But the only articles integrating that information are a Newsday article (bylining the AP writer) and an MSNBC article citing the AP source but with an MSNBC byline. Is it that everyone else decided not to run a story based on the AP source? Or did AP back off of the story themselves?

From Waas:

Luskin asked me to delay publication for a day or two, before deciding on what he wanted to say for the article.

What an idiot. They’re perjuring themselves–but they don’t even have their stories worked out yet!! Karl Rove may or may not be a genius … but his lawyer is a hack.

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