After the revelations of the Newsweek/Koran fiasco, I asked the question last week, “Should journalists’ contract with anonymous sources be null and void if the material turns out to be false?”
Yesterday on CNN’s Reliable Source, David Gergen suggested the answer is “yes.”
“There was an old rule in journalism, and Ben Bradlee represented that at the Washington Post, if an unnamed source lies to a news organization, that source loses his anonymity, by definition, because he’s misled people,” says Gergen. “In this case, it may be that the unnamed source unintentionally misled Newsweek, but nonetheless, given the seriousness of what happened, it seems to me the unnamed source should be unmasked.”
Otherwise, as Gergen suggests, its journalists who must take the heat. I think this is especially true when there is the possibility that the false information was a set-up. With what this White House has tried, I think there are at least a few folks there who would stoop to such. After all, they are not hesitant to suggest that Newsweek’s mistake is evidence of a vast left wing conspiracy among media.