Consider what happened in the weeks since: the Cleveland Plain Dealer held articles based on leaked documents because, as editor Doug Clifton wrote, “talking isn’t an option and jail is too high a price to pay.” The judge in the civil suit filed by the former Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee (accused in the press of spying) ordered four reporters to give up their sources or be held in contempt. And the judges in the libel suit against Sports Illustrated by Mike Price, the former Alabama head football coach, ruled that magazines aren’t specifically protected by the state’s shield law. Then, Phil Currie, Gannett’s senior vice president for news, told employees through an internal newsletter that not all sources are created equal, and that promises of anonymity should be made on a sliding scale.
If the fallout from the Plame case brings more discipline to our use of anonymous sources, we’re all for it. But let’s be clear: confidential sources will always be essential to certain types of important stories. To ban them — or to make reporters afraid to use them — is shortsighted. And to rely on them means standing behind the principle of protecting their confidentiality, come what may.
Of course, this issue of divergent values is about more than anonymous sources, and it promises to get worse as media conglomerates grow ever larger and more diversified. Something of a case study is unfolding in Los Angeles, where Dean Baquet, the Times’s new editor, has said he wants to make it the best newspaper in America. Of the papers that could realistically compete for that title, only the Tribune-owned Times is run by a purely public company. So Tribune shareholders are not unlike Time Warner shareholders. What will Tribune bosses say to Baquet if he finds himself facing the kind of decision Norman Pearlstine faced?
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