To cite a self-serving example, before the Washington Times quoted me on the issue of the Obama campaign’s bully tactics, they asked me if I agreed to be quoted by my real name which, to the surprise of my readers, is not really Xrlq. I agreed, but if I hadn’t, would that have been a reason not to quote me at all?”

Well, the obvious answer is “no,” but there is qualitative difference between the two quotes.

In the instance of your quote, all the reader (or, preferably, the reporter) has to do is look up the text of the case that you cite to determine whether you are telling the truth. IOWs, even if it turns out that Xrlq is a cad, bounder, and worthless layabout, the reading public does not have to take his word for the argument. The truth of the information can be independently verified and, if false, everyone learns that Xrlq is a lying weasel.

In the instance of assertions about Palin, the reader is utterly unable to do so because the news organization has actively concealed the information necessary to determine the truth of the quote. In such a case, I think that Beldar is right. When the only way to evaluate the truth of the quote is to assess the credibility of the speaker, then I think the journalist in question should either provide that information or just hold on to the story until he finds another way to verify the story.

Hey, maybe he could have called up James Joyner to confirm the story. He seems to think that he has the ability to read Sarah Palin’s mind.

To cite a self-serving example, before the Washington Times quoted me on the issue of the Obama campaign’s bully tactics, they asked me if I agreed to be quoted by my real name which, to the surprise of my readers, is not really Xrlq. I agreed, but if I hadn’t, would that have been a reason not to quote me at all?

To Carl Cameron and others at Fox News: Shame on you for granting these people anonymity. There is no basis in journalistic ethics for you to do that. Shame on you for reporting this garbage at all. With the exception of a few there like Greta Van Susterin who’ve refused to buy into this nonsense, you are rapidly eroding such credibility and respectability as your network had earned among Americans disgusted with the mainstream media in general. Stop what you’re doing immediately.

I see where you were misled. By “reporting this garbage at all,” I meant “reporting this garbage at all” based on confidential sources, i.e., I intended for the first (topic) sentence to qualify the entire paragraph. To be clear: If the sources had been willing to go on the record, I would not have had any complaint with Cameron or Fox News reporting their comments.

Of course, they wouldn’t have made the comments without guarantees of anonymity, so that they could perform their cowardly hatchet jobs and then slink away to their next job as someone else’s campaign aide.

Of course, it’s not just Fox or Cameron who’ve ignored that principle until it’s virtually a dead letter. Others do this far more consistently. It sucks — it’s a major cause of death for professional journalism in America, which I believe is now no more than a rotting corpse.

Look, I’m as strict constructionist as the next guy but I don’t pretend that we govern precisely as envisioned by the Framers in 1787. And, if Sarah Palin sits around reading and thinking about the Constitution, I’ll eat my proverbial hat.

Read somewhere … like in the Constitution?

Anwyn´s last blog post..Dear Mark Steyn

First she can’t name a single paper, then a couple of days later she said she regularly reads The Economist (yeah, right…)

I suppose we’ll have to agree to disagree on whether the Constitution counts as a practical purpose. I think it does. It’s only a matter of time before some VP decides to take it upon himself to assert the powers the Senate Majority Leader (another constitutionally nonexistent position) had long assumed were his. Or, for that matter, until some President and VP have a falling out, and the VP learns the hard way that his only executive duties are as a Cabinet member who serves at the pleasure of the President.

For all practical purposes, the VP is an executive officer with ceremonial duties in the legislature.

James Joyner´s last blog post..Obama’s Landslide in Perspective