Source Protection

Liberals may be pleased that New York Times reporter Judy Miller left prison to testify about Scooter Libby. She wasn't protecting a whistleblower after all, but a man engaged in a whisper campaign to silence a whistleblower. It was a "bad" leak, liberals argue. Testifying might jail media Machiavellis like Mr. Libby and Karl Rove. So it was right this once for a reporter to give up a confidential...

Whatever Bob Woodward did or didn't do, should or shouldn't have done, knew or didn't know, several lessons can be drawn from this latest of media scandals-and none of them speak well of journalism as it is practiced at elite levels today. For one thing, the very definition of an "investigative reporter," as Woodward is labeled these days ad nauseum, is a pretty elastic one. Meeting a source in a...

AT WHAT point does naiveté become something to be ashamed of? The revelation last week that Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward abetted the Bush administration's program of lies and character assassination left you feeling as if you, too, have been a coconspirator in the sleaze. Not that you were under any illusion about the turn Woodward's career took when he became a justifying megaphone for '...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The Washington Post's ombudsman rebuked journalist Bob Woodward on Sunday for withholding what he knew about the CIA leak probe from his editor and for making public statements that were dismissive of the investigation without disclosing his own involvement. One of the best-known investigative reporters in the United States, Woodward revealed last week that he testified...

The revelation that acclaimed journalist Bob Woodward sat on information in the CIA leak case for two years is difficult to defend even by "mainstream" journalists who have admired his work for more than three decades. Woodward testified to special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald on Monday that a senior Bush administration official told him in mid-June 2003 about Valerie Plame's job at the CIA. She...

As reporters keep scrambling to find out who told Bob Woodward about Joe Wilson’s wife, Woodward himself has told TIME about a related mystery: what made the source finally come forward. When the Washington Post reporter went public with his involvement in the CIA leak case earlier this week, he failed to explain why his source waited silently for two years before coming clean to special...

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) - Bob Woodward's startling true confession will have a far-reaching impact on more than the trial of Lewis Libby, the top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney who has been indicted for perjury in connection with the CIA leak case. I suspect that the Woodward affair will change a time-honored tradition in my profession. Now, journalists/would-be authors are likely to receive...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal judge found Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus in civil contempt on Wednesday for refusing to disclose names of sources in the case of Wen Ho Lee, the former Los Alamos nuclear scientist once suspected of espionage. Ruling in the latest defeat for reporters in the courts, U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer imposed a fine of $500 a day until Pincus complies...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Bob Woodward's name is synonymous with anonymous sources, ''Deep Throat'' and reporting that uncovered a scandal that brought down a presidency. Some three decades after Watergate, the outing of Woodward in the CIA leak investigation underscores the change in anonymous sourcing and revives the criticism of the media's use of unnamed officials to curry favor. Woodward's career...

WASHINGTON -- Vice President Dick Cheney is not the unidentified source who told Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward about the CIA status of the wife of Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson, a person familiar with the investigation said Thursday. Woodward did not talk with the vice president that day, did not provide the information that's been reported in Woodward's notes and has not had...