It was recently revealed in Vanity Fair and confirmed by Bob Woodward that former FBI honcho Mark Felt was the notorious Deep Throat. The initial work done through the Washington Post investigation was as instrumental as anything the government did during the Watergate scandal toppled the presidency of one Richard Nixon. Nixon left the White House in disgrace as investigations turned up one thing after another and a number of individuals including talk show host G.Gordon Liddy and other did hard time for their part in the scandal. One of the most important aspects of this though is still a contentious issue today: anonymous sources.

In journalism classes, they pound into your head not to use anonymous sources unless there's no other way. ALWAYS get attribution. Newsweek has gotten themselves in deep kimchee recently over using anonymous sources and it cost them a great deal of credibility. Anonymous sources are used with more and more frequency ever since Watergate happened. It's cost major journalistic institutions like Newsweek and others much of the trust the people had in them. Bob Novak made a royal ass of himself or not revealing the source of a leak he sprung the endangered the life of a CIA operative after her diplomat husband gave the White House information it didn't like and eventually got public about it.

There's a recognized standard in journalism to protect the source and some have gone to jail for it but I think one needs to discern whether that source is worth going to jail for and also when it's worth the trouble of using a confidential source at all. There's was a good story on

NPR's Morning Edition

this morning regarding this very topic.

Mr. Felt is 91 years old and G.Gordon Liddy is certainly past his prime. I suspect the brawls or the murders would be out at this point. But the issue still remains about whistle blowers in the system, particularly with regard to journalists and where it goes from here. The FBI sources that talked to Newsweek seems to have gotten things a bit wrong but maybe Newsweek didn't go far enough to verify the story either. Where does liability begin and end for the journalist, especially when people's lives were in danger as with the Newsweek story and the riots in Afghanistan?

posted by Stithmeister @ 1:58 PM
 
0 Comments:


Post a Comment

<< Home