The Ignorant Investor

"Let's start with the first fact. Woodward knew key information about the leak and was probably the first person to receive the leak. And yet this is the first we're hearing about it, more than two years later.

I can't see where there's anything wrong with this."

I usually don't talk about political issues on this blog, but I saw this line by journalist Josh Marshall on the popular Talkingpointsmemo blog and just can't get it out of my mind. It shows you everything that's wrong with the business of journalism.

Put aside republicanism or democratic hatred of the Bush regime for a moment and focus strictly on the concept that the job of journalists is to inform a reader of significant news. I'm not talking about some pie-eyed journalism school code of ethics here, either. I pay 50 cents or a buck for a newspaper, I expect to know what the reporter knows. That's the unwritten contract between newspaper and reader. There isn't any disclaimer at the top: "We'll tell you only part of the story- you're not inside enough to know better."

So here sits Bob Woodward, holding back a significant part of one of the major political stories of the day. Why? Because he got the information from a source inside the White House, and Bob doesn't want to risk burning his contacts for future scoops. In essence, if he talks now, no one will talk to him in the future. Gasp. Imagine that. We'll be deprived of third-hand, unattributed gossip aimed at manipulating the political process. Woodward won't be invited to intimate tete-a-tetes with government officials. Invitations to the best White House and congressional cocktail parties would dry up. He might have to do legwork to talk to people lower down in the food chain. How cataclysmic for news coverage in our nation's capital.

This obsession with retaining access to insiders in large organizations is common in business journalism, which is why 95% of the stuff isn't worth reading. Now we know that political journalism runs the same way. Josh Marshall shouldn't be defending the practice. Allowing the sources to control the flow of information just turns the power of disclosure over to them. It's emasculating to the journalist, and it seems as though more and more D.C. journalists are choosing emasculation over news reporting.

I imagine Washington's choirs must suffer from a surplus of sopranos.