The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
Two Stories in One!
- “Paul Ryan Admits GOP Can’t Govern Without a Hostage Crisis”–headline, Greg Sargent blog post, Washington Post website, May 29
- “Ryan didn’t say that explicitly, of course.”–Sargent, same post
But Enough About Me . . .
“My only interest is making sure that when I look back 20 years from now, I say I accomplished everything that I could while I had this incredible privilege to advance the interests of the broadest number of Americans and to make sure that this country was stronger and more prosperous than it was when I came into office. That’s my only interest.”–Barack Obama, May 29, quoted by The Weekly Standard
1 Lived
“2 Diplomats Met Uneven Fates in Benghazi Uproar”–headline, New York Times, May 30
Hush-Hush Holder
“Attorney General Eric Holder’s plans to sit down with media representatives to discuss guidelines for handling investigations into leaks to the news media have run into trouble,” CNN reports. The problem is his insistence that the meeting be off the record:
The Associated Press issued a statement Wednesday objecting to plans for the meetings to be off the record. “If it is not on the record, AP will not attend and instead will offer our views on how the regulations should be updated in an open letter,” said Erin Madigan White, the AP’s media relations manager.
The New York Times is taking the same position. “It isn’t appropriate for us to attend an off-the-record meeting with the attorney general,” executive editor Jill Abramson said in a statement.
CNN and the Puffington Host are also begging off, but the network reports representatives of The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and Politico plan to attend.
BuzzFeed.com notes that Brad Woodhouse, communications director for the Democratic National Committee, tweeted: “POTUS asked AG to review how leak investigations are done but some in the media refuse to meet with him. Kind of forfeits your right [to] gripe.” When somebody replied that government officials shouldn’t demand off-the-record meetings, Woodhouse answered: “By that logic, journos shouldn’t accept anonymous leaks.”
The Woodhouse position is rather outrageous. The “right to gripe” is implicit in the First Amendment, as Woodhouse conceded in a later tweet. What he presumably meant to say was that the news organizations diminished the moral authority of their gripes by refusing the meeting. But of course they didn’t refuse the meeting; they refused the condition that it be off the record. Such restrictions on the use of information are by mutual consent; reporters are obliged to honor such agreements with sources, but not to enter into them in the first place.
In response to Woodhouse’s tweet about anonymous sources, Gabe Rottman of the American Civil Liberties Union “differed with the Democratic Party spokesman’s line,” Buzzfeed notes:
“This is very different. These news organizations are trying to maintain their independence. The Department of Justice, in reaching out to media organizations and public interest groups, is doing the right thing in terms of soliciting input in how to improve the guidelines for when they can issue subpoenas like they did in the Associated Press case. But news organizations can preserve their independence, and if they’re called into an off-the-record meeting where they can’t comment [on what was said], I think there’s a legitimate concern that the DOJ can then say, ‘We solicited their comment and we’re making these changes,’ and it almost hamstrings the ability of news organizations to object to what the DOJ decides to do,” Rottman said.
“This is actually a newsworthy event,” he said of the planned meeting. “News organizations want to maintain their ability to report if something newsworthy happens in the meeting.”
It always makes us nostalgic when someone from the ACLU makes a good point.
For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.
