Journalists as friends

I couldn’t disagree more profoundly with the fundamental underpinning of David Schlesinger’s lengthy commentary [It’s not stenography… and it’s not always nice] - the glib, flip but morally and ethically shallow assertion that “for a good journalist, the story will trump the friendship”. That a government or a corporation will try to keep its secrets in a safe deposit and a proper journalist will do his/her utmost to find the combination is a given. But a journalist, first and foremost, should be a human being with the full moral content that that entails, and this ethical “humanity” should both inform and trump simple journalism.

Schlesinger writes that journalism’s “about balancing what’s called national security with the good that can come from transparency” and he cites his own experiences in China. I have no knowledge of the scope of Schlesinger’s revelations about the inner workings or security clampdowns in China when he was there. He says he did his utmost to protect his sources, and I hope he did.

Obviously governments, and not just those of the repressive, paranoid Chinese variety, are going to do their best to find out the source of a leak. They should do so according to strict legal rules, which it seems that the US Justice Department has so far followed in the current cases. But a journalist is also responsible for the implications and potentially foreseeable consequences of his story. What if the North Korean leak burned an essential intelligence source, perhaps leading to his/her death and cutting off a vital source of information on something later that is of primordial national security interest? Likewise with the Yemen plane bombing episode. What if that too led to the unravelling of vital sources, their deaths, and later failure to preempt a major catastrophic attack? Hypotheses, yes, but something that the journalist as human being must weigh very carefully. And in these cases, wouldn’t the government be duty bound to do all in its power to discover and staunch the leakages?

Of course there is going to be this continual tension between government and reporter, but it’s the idea that journalism trumps all, which I find implicit in Schlesinger’s friendship example, that I see as troubling. Many decades ago in Cuba an American was arrested on suspicion of spying for the CIA and many rumours abounded. Finally the Swiss ambassador, who represented US interests, called in the resident foreign press, told them the rumours were true, but asked them not to publish anything yet, saying there was a still a chance of getting the spying charges with its mandatory 30-year sentence reduced to the much lesser charge of black-marketeering if nothing was yet published. Back from the embassy after the meeting, the New York Times correspondent said: “I’m not a human rights activist, I’m a journalist” and went ahead with the story, forcing the others to do the same or face callbacks. The ambassador may have been over-optimistic and it might have happened anyway, but the American was then charged with espionage and sentenced to 30 years. It’s not exactly the same as the current examples, but it does show that there is something over and above the “journalism trumps friendship” syndrome.

Just as worrying is the unlikelihood that such an ethical attitude would be confined merely to the question of breaking stories. It is more likely that it would inform the person’s overall moral standards, whether reporting, scaling the professional tree, or in many other aspects of human intercourse. ■