January 9, 2004


BOB GARFIELD: This is On the Media. Brooke Gladstone is out of town. I'm Bob Garfield. This week we learned of the newest wrinkle in the Valerie Plame affair. Plame is the wife of former ambassador Joseph Wilson whose skeptical report about a supposed Iraqi uranium purchase in Niger contradicted those famous 16 words in President Bush's State of the Union Speech. In an apparent attempt to undercut Wilson's credibility, a government source leaked to conservative columnist Bob Novak the juicy fact that Wilson's wife Plame was a CIA officer who helped her husband get the Niger investigation gig. Now, to find the source of that leak, federal investigators are asking select members of the administration to sign a release to relieve journalists from any pledge of confidentiality. This raises some interesting ethical questions, and who better to answer them than ALY COLÓN:, ethics group leader at the Poynter Institute. ALY, welcome to the show.

ALY COLÓN: Hello, Bob.

BOB GARFIELD:Let's lay out the ethical basics here. Undoubtedly there are those out there who are watching this whole thing unfold who can't believe that a special counsel is prepared to spend millions of taxpayer dollars to find the leaker when Bob Novak could solve the problem in a second, and for free, by just outing his source. Why should Robert Novak keep his mouth shut?

ALY COLÓN:Well, the cost monetarily might be free, but the cost to journalism and sources who rely on journalists to keep their word would be quite high.

BOB GARFIELD:Are there any even hypothetical reasons that would give Robert Novak license to blab? For example, the fact that this is a government source who may have been mis-using his government knowledge and authority to harm a private citizen?

ALY COLÓN:The important thing to remember is what you're promising with regards to your source, and so there are options - and I don't know what they are with Mr. Novak here - but there are options with regards to how you handle that kind of agreement that may in fact allow you to provide the information's cir--circumstances. I'll give you just a different type of example that I'm familiar with. At the Seattle Times where I worked as an editor and as a reporter, during the coverage of Senator Brock Adams who was a senator at that time, and the allegations regarding sexual harassment that took place, there was a lot of reporting done that sought information from what would be anonymous sources -- women who wanted to speak about the issue but not be identified. What the Times did in that case was to promise them anonymity but also to have them agree that if the senator brought this to trial or went to court, they would agree to be identified. And so they arranged for a way of maintaining a promise of confidentiality with conditions which the sources agreed to, should the circumstances change.

BOB GARFIELD:Okay. Got that. But now there is this new wrinkle in the Plame case, and that is that federal investigators are asking Bush administration officials to sign a release that would give Novak permission to identify the source. Let's just say that Novak promised unequivocally to protect the anonymity of the source. If presented ex post facto with the release, does Novak have to honor it if it was, for all intents and purposes, signed under duress?

ALY COLÓN:I don't think it changes the obligation that Mr. Novak has if he's made the promise to keep it that way because the person I think would directly have to come to him and release him, and then there's an even shorter cut to that, which is for the person simply to identify themselves.

BOB GARFIELD:It looks like no matter what Bob Novak does, somehow journalism is going to have egg on its face. Either he's going to scandalize himself and the trade by giving up a source, or he's going to scandalize himself and the trade for allowing some government official to harm Wilson and Plame, or he's going to embarrass himself by wasting a lot of taxpayer dollars by not surrendering voluntarily a name that a very expensive investigation is ultimately going to turn up anyway. So-- we can't win for losing, can we?

ALY COLÓN:Well, it would seem that way, although I think it's important that people understand that there are no rules, regulations or law that govern this kind of activity -- that we're standing on principles here, and I do think there is an opportunity to use the Novak case to educate the public about what the use of anonymous sources entails -- what its dangers are -- how it should be done -- why it's done -- and in fact, better yet, why it should be avoided whenever possible all together.

BOB GARFIELD: Well, Ali, thank you very much.

ALY COLÓN: Thank you.

BOB GARFIELD: Ali Cologne is an ethicist with the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida. [MUSIC UP & UNDER]

BOB GARFIELD:And now for the second installment in our two-part series on Pakistani media. Last time we looked at the Pakistani press and how it has changed under President General Pervez Musharraf. Although most journalists agree that Musharraf allows more press freedom than ever before, the print media continue to be threatened by military and clerical intimidation.

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