BOB GARFIELD: Last month. Toby McDaniel of the Springfield, Illinois, State Journal-Register was writing about a controversial city tax increase. One passage in his column read as follows: "One wag doesn't think aldermen went overboard on the tax hike. 'Get real!' he quips. 'Seven million dollars won't patch all the potholes.'" Oh, those devilish wags. They're so waggish, and not just in Central Illinois. From the New York Times to the London Times, from the South China Morning Post to the Kentucky Jewish Post and Opinion, from Air Safety Week to Hot Rod, 'one wag' is among the most quoted personalities in journalism.

GENE WEINGARTEN: A wag is the fat guy at the desk next to you.

BOB GARFIELD: Gene Weingarten, while reasonably trim himself, is that fat guy...resident Washington Post funnyman whose various one-liners have more than once found their way into other people's stories. Because he's the humor columnist, free to crack wise unimpeded, he needn't resort to blind quoting, but other journalists are less at liberty to associate themselves with zingers, lest they compromise their objectivity or poison the well with the sources getting zinged. Rita Zekas, for instance, entertainment writer for the Toronto Star, has quoted one wag 28 times over the past 15 years.

RITA ZEKAS: (Exasperated) Yes, I have. They're a code for one specific wag. I'm not going to attribute it to him, so I made him one wag. He is one wag.

BOB GARFIELD: AKA Rob Salem, Toronto Star TV critic and Zekas's longtime boyfriend.

BOB GARFIELD: I understand you are one wag.

ROB SALEM: [LAUGHS] Ah, busted, at last.

BOB GARFIELD: You've been outed, man.

ROB SALEM: Well, yes. Sadly, it's true.

BOB GARFIELD:But the story does not end here, because contrary to Gene Weingarten's assertion, there is no reason to assume that one wag is always the fat man or the boyfriend or one of the cynical boys and girls on the bus. Often enough, it is the reporter himself, laundering his own witticisms through the attribution to an anonymous supposed third party.

JEFFREY DVORKIN: Journalists are like the eunuch in the harem.

BOB GARFIELD: Jeffrey Dvorkin is NPR's ombudsman.

JEFFREY DVORKIN: You know, we have all of the responsibility and none of the pleasure. So, every once in a while, if we're allowed to be waggish, I think it satisfies our instincts to be amusing as well as informative...I've said it myself.

BOB GARFIELD:Mind you, Dvorkin is the listening public's in-house advocate on matters of journalistic behavior, and he fesses up. That's partly because he is an honest man who well understands the challenges facing reporters in the field, and partly because he's a Canadian, a foreigner to our shores, and therefore infected with dangerous foreign ideas. In Canada, a database search reveals, one wag is saying and quipping and wryly observing just everywhere: The National Post, Hamilton Spectator, Edmondton Sun, Vancouver Sun, Montreal Gazette, Regina Leader-Post, Ottawa Citizen, Calgary Herald and-- Rita Zekas's Toronto Star. Jeffrey Dvorkin.

JEFFREY DVORKIN: It's a funny Canadianism, and I think originally a Britishism that has crept into the language, at least in those parts of the Commonwealth that still call the Queen our Queen.

MARTIN WALKER: One of the things about this British Empire --it's the gift that keeps on giving.

BOB GARFIELD: UPI editor in chief Martin Walker believes one wag has his origins on Fleet Street, where historically reporters have been devilish, ruthless and, often, too drunk to remember who quipped what. In fact, Walker's quoted one wag himself.

MARTIN WALKER: At least once. On occasion we've all felt that the joke was just so good it had to be shared. It's one of those very useful phrases like when one has just arrived in some riot-torn city and you're on your way from the airport in a taxi, and you're interviewing the taxi driver, you will talk about "local observers said."

BOB GARFIELD: In other words, a half truth, if a fairly benign one. The Washington Post's Gene Weingarten.

GENE WEINGARTEN:You're talking as though this is some sort of journalistic sin. We're telling the truth. Is the person saying as one wag, who is not myself, said? I believe that it is a sin so negligible, so minuscule that it doesn't exist.

BOB GARFIELD:That gets to one last thing about one wag. The caustic hilarity so compelling as to justify journalistic, let's say, sleight of hand, is usually not especially, you know, hilarious. A month ago, after Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin toned down his previous outrage at a scandal occurring under his predecessor, the Toronto Globe and Mail's Rod Mickleburgh was moved to quote One Wag.

ROD MICKLEBURGH: Quote. "It's the beginning of his post-Mad As Hell tour," quipped one media wag, referring to the anger Mr. Martin displayed in the days immediately after a sensational report by Auditor-General Sheila Fraser revealed the extent of the sponsorship scandal. Pretty good quip, I thought.

BOB GARFIELD:Yeah. Just let me catch my breath. What if I assert that the elaborate qualification and explanation of the quote in the subsequent clauses kind of took some of the impact from its pithiness?

ROD MICKLEBURGH: Ah, you yanks. Get a healthcare system. It's a good, strong, powerful, funny line, and I'm sticking with it.

BOB GARFIELD: Quipped one wag. [THEME MUSIC UP & UNDER]

BOB GARFIELD: That's it for this week's show. On the Media was directed by Katya Rogers and produced by Janeen Price, Megan Ryan and Tony Field, and edited-- by Brooke. Dylan Keefe is our technical director, and Rob Christiansen our engineer; we had help from Derek John. Our webmaster is Amy Pearl.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Arun Rath is our senior producer and Dean Cappello our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. You can listen to the program and get free transcripts and MP3 downloads at onthemedia.org, and email us at onthemedia@wnyc.org. This is On the Media, from NPR. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

GENE WEINGARTEN: As one wag, who is not myself, said?

BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield.