Great piece except your snide insinuation that Clinton had picked Lieberman to be her running mate.

I'll tell you who it is, as a reward for those who have made it this far in comments -- Jake Tapper of ABC.

Okay, so now your rule is that if your readers hassle you enough, you'll break a confidentiality agreement that you never agreed to?

Here's the deal, and this is from a former journalist with some years of Washington reporting experience: Every reporter makes his own rules. The keys are disclosure, honor, and common sense.

If Carlson and Tom Russert are spineless kiss-asses, which they obviously are, that's their choice. Too many reporters are just like that, but I'll return to that subject. Other reporters, myself included, set a different rule: Unless it's agreed off the record in advance, then it's on the record.

Now, whether I'd actually put a comment out there after being requested not to would be a matter of its newsworthiness, just as you indicated. I'd certainly feel no ethical qualms about it, and there were times when I reported things said to me that someone tried to take back.

Many journalists lack the guts to do that. The reasons are more complicated than they seem. Editors want stories, and if their reporters piss off the powerful then the river will dry up. This is especially true if you're anyone other than the N.Y. Times, Wall Street Journal, or the Washington Post. But these days, even they can be successfully pressured.

Why? Because, in the final analysis, the end users don't really care. If a politician gets in a pissing match with the media, these days the politician will win it. Look at what just happened to the New York Times in the McCain-lobbyist story. He won that battle, and he won it because the public is lazy and distracted, and hence gets the "journalism" it deserves.

As long as the public values good manners over the truth, well, the media will give the public what it wants. An infintely bigger problem than this one is the time-honored "background briefing," where the archetypal "senior administration official" will talk to 30 reporters in a room on the condition that his name not be used.

That's an institution that could be killed within six weeks if the top two-dozen media outlets would boycott those things. It would take coordinated action, but it would work. Just think how the Iraq War might have proceeded differently if the Bush administration hadn't been able to use so many background briefings, and if the media had been generally less willing to grant "background" status (withhold attribution) to interviewees.

In your contratemps with Jake Tapper, you should have revealed his name up front. I would have. If his e-mail was important enough to mention and characterize, then the sender was important enough to name. It shouldn't have taken a bunch of browbeating to get you to do what any journalist with a set of nads would do.

Unfortunately, nads are in dwindling supply. As long as the sheep -- the general public -- lap this stuff up like cats being fed their morning dish of warm milk, I'm afraid this trend will continue unabated.

sorry, i'm back. can't stay on line due to this and that...but you seemed to have a problem with myself and pinky that from my perspective is, heh?

unless you jusr get off on folks fucking themselves...

You deserve whatever prize they give journalist for speaking truth to power. The mistrust of America's media is at an all time high. Obama campaign has proven that whenever you speak truth to power, power always win...let's see if it's different this time.

I think the words you are searching for are "cemented his legacy of fighting for strong executive powers", not "refused to disavow torture". That, at least, is how the NYT views it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/washington/09policy.html

when that interview with Samantha Power was printed, except perhaps Sean Connery. You seem to be saying that everyone in the English-speaking world must play by American rules and that just because the word "monster" is used colloquially in "some circles" in America everybody for whom English is the lingua franca must toe the line because it's OK to use that insult in Hollywood. The word is highly insulting as it indicates that a human being is a freak or incubus, a combination of human and beast. It's important for Americans to realise that gratuitous insults may not be so readily accepted in a foreign country. Foreign policy has not been America's strong suit in recent years and here you've gone bungling again, riding roughshod over the sensitivities and sensibilities of other people. What's more, Steve D, the people of the British Isles don't need any lectures from Hollywood on the English language, colloquial or otherwise. Scotland is not a U.S. bailiwick and what you define as "colloquial" applies only "in some circles" in the USA; "monster" is a serious word and is used loosely by papers such as "The Sun" ()very different from "The Scotsman")

as a term of abuse for serial killers, child-murderers and the like. You also dispute that the disclosure that Samantha Power used such a word about a candidate who is Barack Obama's rival is revelatory. I think it is and am reminded of some words from what's known as the Scottish play:"Look like the innocent flower but be the serpent under it". It revealed that someone very close to Senator Obama who represents himself as a uniter is quite prepared to malign another candidate, giving an interview to a reporter she did not know and thinking that she could decide the rules of that interview. The reporter is a young woman but not nearly as important as Samantha Power so Samantha took a phone call while being interviewed. She showed no respect at all for Gerri Peev and even less for Hillary Clintin. Not revelatory? You must be joking.

That is Tucker Carlson. I remember, when I first saw that twit on CNN, and he wore a bowtie, I told my wife: trust me. Guys who wear bowties are strange rangers. In TC's case, he's just a dickhead. I think he is so twitty it is almost off the charts on shitforbrains TV characters. I would like to lock he and Glen Beck in one of those sky cable dealies which go way up to Swiss mountain tops, then pull the plug, and let them remain there for days.

As far as Tim Russert ... give me a break.

In one of the debates, Tim got the first question of Senator McCain. Even though McCain had stupidly made comments about his not being at his best with economic matters, and even though Russert had the staff to have looked up that statement exactly ... word for word, where, when, in what context, he allowed John McCain to deny he'd ever said such a thing. Russert, the so-called Iron Man of NBC Journalism, didn't push it; didn't say, well, Senator, I've got the transcript and ... no, Senator, you DId say it, and I will hand you the transcript or we can even show the video ... but noooooo.

Russert accepted McCain's denial and that was that.

Now, anything Russert says after that makes him LOOK like a weenie, not a lion.

Russert often allows politicians to dance ... a two or three sentence exchange ... Russert says, well, here is what you said about ... but then ... he moves on. Instead of just saying, "You know, Sir, I have the transcript; I have the photo with the words; how can you now say, here, that you didn't say that?" And then, wait for the next response. And then say: I don't want to 'enable you,' Senator ... I really would think the American people would like for me to be their eyes, ears, mouth ... and resolve this. You ARE, after all, running for P R E S I D E N T."

If any TV journalists have the testicles to ask Obama to now try and rectify the impressions he's given his constituents about say, NAFTA, or, his strategy and plans for Iraq with the kind of thing which emerged during Sanders' interviews on those subjects ... if any of them now go into the kind of treatment of specifics against the heavy duty manipulation of rhetoric v. "candor" with Europeans or Canadians ... well, I won't hold my breath.

The incredible scorching Hillary Clinton has received over the years makes whatever she has asked Obama to explain like burping a baby. Americans who want to vote for history should vote for the first highly competent, intelligent, skilled, nimble female contender for the White House. If people really, really, don't believe that electing such a woman to the White House WON'T initiate change, they're silly.

Around the world, whether it was Golda Meir, or Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister Merkle in Germany, Indira Gandhi, Benazir Bhutto, or the new President of Argentina ... each election of a woman to the highest office has been significant. There are a million and one ways Obama and the Republicans have tried to excoriate Hillary. I wonder when journalists are going to interview women, and ask why it is, the media and certainly, the Obamistas believe it is highly understandable for African-Americans to vote for the historical African-American candidate, but somehow, when this question is brought up about women ... there is the .. "well, certainly women aren't going to stoop so low as to vote for Hillary JUST BECAUSE SHE'S a woman!"

Senator Clinton is one of a number of women in the Senate. That takes them, automatically, out of the realm of "just a woman." There is a hierarchy of competence among the women in the Senate. Senator Clinton has been at the top of that list. She has also shown an ability to work compromises with Republicans. And not just once or twice. Many times.

We will need that consensus developer in the White House.

I do believe Senator Clinton should also be asked pointed questions. I hope she is. I believe she's been vetted. I support her to the last.