Last night, we enjoyed Dan Cohen’s little chat at Raking Through Books about anonymous sources, and we found some closure. Cohen suggested that the real beacon of hope in press-source-public affairs has been and will continue to be the U.S. Supreme Court.
A little background: Cohen sued the Star Tribune and the Pioneer Press for violating their confidentiality agreements with him, after he attempted to pass along damning information about a political rival. And the case rose all the way to the USSC. The Men (and Woman) in black ended up siding with Cohen, and said that the press is not above the law when it comes to verbal contracts, no matter what they may say about First Amendment protections.
Now, where we found some closure–at least so far as how Cohen’s case is related to present difficulties, or how he sees it to be, anyway–is that the First Amendment does not necessarily apply when it is being used to shield illegal activity, civil or criminal. (The comparison to yelling “fire” in a theater is inexact, but informative.) Naturally, Cohen sides with the decision of Time editor in chief Norman Pearlstine, who in all modesy and righteousness asserted that Time could not hold itself above the law to protect an anonymous source who had apparently broken the law in opening his mouth. (By contrast, Cohen had NOT broken the law–he had merely made public documents available to the local papers.)
So it is Cohen’s belief that the Supreme Court in both cases recognized that a law had been broken, and that that violation needed redress, and the First Amendment could not be used to impede that redress.
Cohen does not hold the press in very high regard, especially the local press. In fact, he gets real exercised thinking about the arrogance of the local daily papers. This is undoubtedly a function of having spent ten years of his life trying to extract justice from them for breaking their agreements and more or less ruining his public life. We’re not sure we agree with Cohen when he describes the press as self-styled “Gods who walk the Earth entirely above the law.” That applies to almost all corporations of a certain size and profit margin. But Cohen’s slightly odd blind spot, developed, we think, as a result of his own redemption from bitter, dirty political hardball, is what could have been a more pointed attack on the liberal bias of the local papers, particularly the Star Tribune. He mentioned it, but he could have made considerably more hay.
It may be more or less obvious that, through various machinations, the Strib is trying to shed the albatross of lefty bias that has for so long defined the community it patronizes. But back when Cohen was a GOP operative, it is almost unthinkable that his effort to cultivate a cheap smear against a respected governor (actually respected governor’s running mate) would not have generated its own backlash at the papers conservatives love to hate. We cannot, for the life of us, understand why he didn’t mail his public documents anonymously, and patiently wait to see if either paper picked up on the story. Cohen expresses astonishment that the local papers turned HIM into the story. “That would be like Ben Bradlee telling Woodward and Bernstein, ‘The real story here is Deep Throat. Let’s publish his name!”
Well, not exactly, no. But here’s where the allusion is interesting: Imagine what the Washington Press, or the Weekly Standard, or The National Review would have done with the snitching of Mark Felt. Maybe you begin to get the idea what the pre-McClatchy Star Tribune would have done with some public documents cheaply smearing a beloved Democratic politician. You might also speculate why those idolatrous right-wing institutions are presently as quiet as a Convent on Good Friday, with regard to Mr. Rove.
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