June 01, 2005
W. Mark Felt's Bad Example
Deep Throat did deep damage to daily journalism.
I worked in the composing room of a minor metropolitan daily during the Watergate/end of the Vietnam War years and entered the reporting ranks shortly thereafter. Modern-day journalism was forged in that era. Every young reporter wanted to be like Woodward and Bernstein (or was it Redford and Hoffman?). News accounts reflected a healthy distrust of government authority. Applications to journalism schools swelled.
By the early 1980s, a telling phrase began appearing routinely in the stories of those reporters who wanted to be part of this new elite. "Sources said." "A source close to the investigation said." "Knowledgeable participants said."
Felt's coming out party coincides with a full-fledged government assault on this routine practice. Two journalists -- Time Magazine's Matthew Cooper and the New York Times' Judith Miller -- face jail time for refusing to divulge the names of their sources in the Valerie Plame affair. They were not guilty of outing that CIA agent. That honor belongs to Robert Novak and still unnamed administration officials upset by her husband's unmasking the Bush administration's false claim that Middle Eastern terrorists were trying to obtain Nigerian plutonium. Rather, they were simply trying to report the story behind the story.
And therein lies the trap that all the Mark Felt's of the world set for journalists who would go along with their demands for anonymity. The leaker has tremendous power over the journalist. When they refuse to attach their names to their information, the news consumer cannot judge the veracity of the source. The news consumer cannot consider the speaker's motive. And the journalistic competition gets caught up in chasing the same piece of information, thereby abjuring more useful tasks like analysis or moving the story forward. These were Cooper and Miller's real sins -- not the trumped up charges made against them by government prosecutors who still haven't arrested Robert Novak or the White House leakers.
Like most reporters (and ex-reporters), I had my own experiences with leakers and "on background" or "off the record" government briefings. I can't count the number of times an experienced newsmaker said to me at the outset of a crucial interview, "But you can't use my name with this." The less experienced news manipulator would often tack on something similar at the end of an hour-long conversation. "You're not going to put my name in the paper, are you?"
This was especially pernicious in the world of business journalism where I spent most of my formative years. Business people have axes to grind, especially against their competitors. They want to manipulate government agencies and officials. It's a lot easier to get that local property tax abatement if you leak to the local press that your firm is considering moving to North Carolina.
Mark Felt taught them to do that. I can't sit here this morning and say I never said yes to those requests for anonymity. I wanted to be a player, too. And now as I look back on 20 years of using the phrase "sources said," I can't think of a single instance when my readers and the general public wouldn't have been better off if I just made it clear at the outset of the interview that when you're talking to a reporter, you're talking in public.
Charles Colson, President Nixon's former special counsel and now an evangelical Christian, made that important point in this morning's New York Times. Felt, he said, "could have held a press conference and announced what he had done and he would have been a hero." And he would have struck a telling blow for the constitutional separation of powers that undergirds our democracy and is very much in jeopardy today. Felt's damaging legacy lives on.
As I see it "the news" is not just an objective, at a distance reporting on some event or story but in fact itself can become part of the story or a new story. The news is news. The Newsweek fiasco is an example of how this can be played out tragically. To use anonymous sources is to remove a vital check and balance against fraud, malfeasance and incompetence.
Posted by: paul bellman at June 1, 2005 10:46 AMI completely disagree. We live in a society that punishes those who disagree with the government.
He would have been fired and been useless in providing further information.
Whistel-blowers today, while theoretically protected are actually unable to work thereafer in their field.
In a more perfect world, yes. Otherwise anon is okay with me. We have to judge it be the quality of the output.
I can’t really understand how you come to the conclusion that Mark Felt somehow “damaged” journalism. I’d hate to think what government could be like today if he hadn’t decided to talk and Ben Bradlee had forbidden Bob Woodward to use him to confirm information he’d dug up from other sources.
Using unnamed sources is simply a journalistic tool. Nothing more, nothing less. Like any other tool, when it’s used and how it’s used often makes the difference between creating, say, a work of art or a pile of junk. Using unnamed sources on a regular basis tends to make reporters lazy and that’s a bad thing. However, applied in the right situations, unnamed sources are not only appropriate – they’re crucial to get information to the public. The hard part is deciding when to use it.
There’s an argument to be made that this particular tool has been overused after Watergate; but to be fair, the government’s fondness for “background briefings” and the current administration’s policy of inaccessibility hasn’t done much to discourage media from using it.
And you agree with Colson? Please. If Felt had gone public in 1973, he would have been fired, his reputation trashed by the Nixon administration and all of the Post’s other sources would have dried up for fear of retribution.
Many people will proudly tell you who they are voting for, but not many would do away with the secret ballot that acts as a safeguard against the "tyranny of the majority." Unnamed sources arise from the same need, to protect acts of conscience from the possibility of retribution. Goozner is right to nay-say the proliferation of anonymous spin but wrong to assail a patriot who sought the same protection enshrined in the secret ballot.
Posted by: Bob Mercer at June 1, 2005 01:35 PMYour comments would have more weight if you realized that 1) the naming of Valerie Plame was not a crime or improper because she was not covered by the laws protecting CIA agents - as was obvious from the beginning - and 2) a committee of Parliament has confirmed that Saddam was indeed seeking yellowcake in Africa as reported - as was obvious from the beginning.
Only when governments become totally honest and forthcoming (which will be never) can reporters do away with the need to quote anonymous sources. Felt, Woodward and Bernstein should be commended for their work in exposing the crimes of the Nixon Administration. Perhaps Felt's heroism will inspire others to expose the crimes of the Bush Administration and members of the media will grow some new backbone to report them. We can only hope. In the meantime, let's also take a look at the credibility of named sources -- whether it's our President talking about WMDs in Iraq or Goozner quoting that moral paragon, Charles Colson.
Posted by: David Fluhrer at June 1, 2005 02:23 PM"Perhaps Felt's heroism will inspire others to expose the crimes of the Bush Administration and members of the media will grow some new backbone to report them."
"Crimes of the Bush (a)dministration"? Sounds like you've got a hot scoop there. What's stopping you from revealing what you know?
Posted by: Tom at June 1, 2005 03:14 PMMerrill - Risky business citing a weasel such as Chuck Colson as a press critic. It's no secret that in 1972 he told John Dean to get the FBI to alter a memo that addressed a $400,000 "loan" to the Nixon campaign from ITT lobbyist Dita Beard. Mark Felt declined the opportunity, outraging Colson. You can read about it in today's WashPost and in Dean's book. We need a lot more Felts, and a lot more Woodsteins.
steve daley
Posted by: steve daley at June 1, 2005 04:15 PMJust to clarify for Tom, the "crimes" of the Bush Administration might include using government money for faith-based initiatives in violation of the constitution, the $100 million in taxpayer funds that went missing under the Provisional Authority in Iraq, more money that's gone missing under Halliburton, and on and on. And we haven't even gotten to prisoner abuse, which some see as a violation of international law.
These episodes make Watergate seem like a minor infraction, and it's too bad we don't have more journalists like Woodward and Bernstein (and more highly placed sources like Felt) to bring them to the forefront.
Posted by: David Fluhrer at June 1, 2005 06:04 PMBig difference between yellow-cake uranium ore, which Iraq was known to be seeking, and plutonium, which comes out of a processing capability Niger and most other nations do not possess. Big difference, also, between then (1973) and now. If Felt had been outed by a blogger, Nixon would have had him killed. And he had just the henchmen to make it happen.
Posted by: Robert Knowles at June 1, 2005 09:12 PM