Truth in Reporting?

Dan Froomkin's column, White House Briefing, in the Washington Post, discusses a journalistic faux pas by Time magazine in the Plame leak scandal. As Froomkin explains:

Media Matters , the liberal media watchdog Web site, raises an interesting point about Time Magazine's coverage of the Valerie Plame affair.

Back in this October 2003 story, the magazine reported: "White House spokesman Scott McClellan said accusations of Rove's peddling information are 'ridiculous.' Says McClellan: 'There is simply no truth to that suggestion.'"

It is now clear that several reporters and editors at Time knew very well that McClellan's statement was false.

Media Matters writes: "But despite that knowledge, they participated in the publication of an article containing that quote, with no indication that it was untrue. They participated in the publication of that article, which, in reporting that 'Rove was initially accused by Wilson of being the man behind the leak,' implied that Rove was no longer under suspicion -- even though they all knew that Rove was, in fact, [Matt] Cooper's source."

Is there any excuse for a news organization to print a statement that they know is untrue, without at least trying to clue their readers into the truth? That seems to defeat the central purpose of journalism.

So what should Time have done? One option might have been to go to Rove and say: We know McClellan isn't telling the truth. You either need to tell us the truth, on the record, or tell him the truth.

What if Rove had refused? One option might have been to go to McClellan and tell him that they had reason to think his statement was not accurate.

And if McClellan brushed them off? They should have stopped at nothing until they found a way to report what they knew to be the truth.

This should be a major embarrassment for Time, but sad to say, I don't think it is. To the contrary, in the age of "Truthiness" it hasn't even gotten much, if any, "press" in the media. How can a reporter intentionally withhold information which the reporter personally knows proves the premise of the article to be untrue? Is this omission substantially different than plagiarism or other ethical lapses that journalists have engaged in in recent time? In the end, in each of these instances, the reader is mislead by the reporter.

We are living in an age where everything is categorized as partisan. There are no plain, unvarnished, truthful facts anymore. Spin has been elevated to an art form. Everything has to have a bias, everyone has an agenda. Journalists have allowed themselves to be dragged into this game. There is the so-called "liberal media" in print and on TV and talk radio, right wing pundits abound. The result is that overall, journalism suffers, because it's credibility is compromised.

Shame on Time.