Sometimes things get so crazy around here on a day-to-day basis–y’ know, circulation scandals, declining stock prices, lapdog journalists going to jail for their petty, power-crazed sources–that we forget we’ve seen it all before. (Just for the record: Even lapdog journalists protecting God-complex sources shouldn’t have to forfeit their shoe laces–especially for articles they never actually wrote. Some things really are sacred; pride goeth before the fall, but hopefully it doesn’t take the Constitution with it.)
A timely heads-up: This Tuesday, Dan Cohen will be reading at our happy hour book club, Raking Through Books. We hear that Dan’s phone has been ringing off the hook for the past week or so. This would be why: Cohen’s new book, Anonymous Source, details his little scrap with the Newspaper of the Twin Cities. Cohen was one of those nasty anonymous sources who used his position and his anonymity to besmirch the good name of a political rival in the finger-soiling pages of the Star Tribune; then the Strib turned on him, pretending it had never promised to cover his butt.
It’s a strangely reminiscent episode in which no one looks very good, and the noble light of the First Amendment hardly redeems the press, its sources, or its targets. You can read a sort of round-up here, but you probably don’t want to miss the opportunity to jump right into the crucible. There are some interesting points to be made from the other side of the table–the anonymous source’s side, and it is interesting to consider that the only thing that has kept the real culprits out of the stockade so far in the Plame affair is the non-legally-binding pledge of confidentiality and its officious, if selective waiver.
Nothing could ever make that slack-shouldered blowfish Bob Novak look good, but it’s just possible that he’ll emerge from all of this looking, well, less bad than almost everybody else. And that would be the biggest miscarriage of justice of all.
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